Employee review.
Vulture Hawk Security Solutions 
8-17-25
>A suited man walks through the virginia based offices of Vulture Hawk Secturity Solutions. The name on his badge, is Ethan McMullin.
>McMullin walks at a brisk pace through the office as a blonde haired secretary stands from her station and gives a brief salutation of "Good morning mister McMullin!"
"'Morning, miss Reed. Is the HR rep in the conference room yet?"
>"He certainly is, will that be all for now, sir?"
"Yes, I believe it will."
>With that, Ethan made his way to the conference room where the human resources representative who introduced himself as Peter Thompson stood from a chair he'd staked out before hand and shook his hand before this year's review of McMullin's employees commenced.
>"Good morning, mister McMullin, it's good to see you again."
"Likewise, I think we can skip some of the briefing on what we're doing here."
>"Of course, though, I am obligated to repeat the line, just a formality."
"Then lets get this show on the road."
>"You are Ethan McMullin, primary overseer and secondary handler for teams Razor, Ghost, Predator and Stalker, correct?"
"That is correct, I oversee operations of, and act as secondary handler for teams Razor, Ghost, Predator and Stalker."
>"And for these teams, you take solicitations of contracts and they perform typically independent work, reporting in after they unembed themselves."
"That is correct."
>"Ok. Now that we have the formalities out of the way, is there amy particular order in which you'd like to conduct this year's round of reviews?"
"Lets start with Predator and throw the heaviest stones first."
>"Okay, lets get to their relevent factors."
"I can complain, but only about what I can't complain about. Their effective, but god damn do these guys make me miss the old days when we had that Berdan fella."
>"Berdan?"
"Yeah, I imagine he's getting up in the years with a Russian wife right about now, but ol' Mike Berdan was briefly a hell of a guy."
>"So, what did this character have that these guys don't?"
"Easy guy to work with, not creepy, always polite. Apparently a company endeavor regarding something in the California wastes made him quit the firm. These guys don't have whatever baggage he did, but they're worse."
>"So what do they do, and is continuing their employment wise?"
"Like I said, I can only complain that I can't complain. The team consists of four, George "Boxer" Miles, their leader and infiltration expert, Brandon "Sharp" Kernan, a specialist in forgery, linguistics, various other talents, then there's the strangest of the four, Hank "Bat" Ripkin and John "Crypto" Stanton."
>"And, if I might ask, what are the specialties of.. ahem, Ripkin and Stanton, were they?"
"Bat Ripkin is a diversion specialist, chemist, and communications specialist. Crypto is a hacker, he handles local internal security systems, remote security, appropriation of data, he's a long range marksman, and he's the quiet type. As you can imagine, there's a lot of expertise spread around a lot of very versatile people whose training mostly overlaps."
>"How would you rate the effectiveness of these operatives?"
"They're effective across the board, where they're weird however, is Bat and Crypto."
>"Oh?"
"They came together from the same company, both had a good reference from Omega sirius, both were described as "good kids," which doesn't accord with what I've seen of them. They get their jobs done very effectively, but Bat speaks little and you have to ask to get answers, Crypto on the other hand is a whole new story. Do you know how I know his name?"
>"I assume you were introduced..."
"No, I know his name because I sought it out through payroll. Last week. He's worked here nearly two years and I just learned his name last week. I'm his boss. You see, I could understand if they praised his work ethic, his effectiveness. Good kid? I don't understand that."
>"And why is crypto not, in your eyes a 'good kid,' if you could tell me?"
"He glares at everything, hell, from internal team reports, he hasn't said a complete sentence since we hired him, and then on the rare occasions that he speaks at all, it's in some language that no one's picked out because he doesn't talk long enough. How does a guy like that get through the interview, let alone the polygraph interview?"
>"I suppose those are noteworthy remarks."
"Crypto is effective, look, I don't want to sound like he's incompetent, but when I ask a question about his report, he just silently glares at me like anything else in the world before submitting a revised report explaining my inquiry, he seems to disappear ENTIRELY when he's not on company time, we've tried to track him and never found him, and on top of all the wierd things that give him a slight aura of being a psychotic mute who's only blessed with speech once a month, his physical examinations before being sent into the field are something extreme to behold. I don't know how, how he does it, but in addition to what appears to be four scars of about the same age inflicted by gunshot wounds, he shows up malnourished, underhydrated, high in nicotine, and every couple months, somehow with a new gun that no one else in the world seems to have an example of, that beats all known conventional designs of the same role."
>"Sounds like a handful. So, with all these issues, what would you have me recommend?"
"Continued employment."
>"No psychological evaluation?" 
"Maybe for Bat, but we tried that already with Crypto, he successfully forged a clean bill of health and eacaped a mental assessment clinic. He showed up ready to work the next day, that ever familiar malaise in his eyes, that glare of concentration, like he was observing the environment around for any sign of the next thing to approach him, ready to respond at an instant."
>"Sounds like I'd like to meet this fellow."
"You might not. He's quiet."
>"I'll take your word for it, but are you sure? It sounds like he might have some blessings that might serve him elsewhere."
"Believe me, I'm sure. The Alien stays. Now that we got Crypto out of the way, lets talk about Ghost...?

4-28-24 
>"I've got a good view on the sentry, he's keyed in on the radio. Crypto, put'em down when he's off it."
>Crypto stares down the scope of the rifle as he flicks the safety off. The sentry removes his hand from the set.
>Crypto places his finger on the trigger and slowly squeezes as he lets the seconds pass. First one, then three, then ten. A sound half like a snap and half like a hiss erupts...
>As Crypto watched the bullet travel through the air, the lens behind the bluish gray aperture focusing on a distortion, visible through the scope and a small yellow reflection visible within, he thought to himself that it was a successful test of the new rifle. The yellow reflection stopped rising in a fraction of a second, listing lazily to the left and downward until it disappeared, jolting through the sentry's chest as he fell swiftly from the tower.
>The attack they'd been payed to carry out would start as Crypto reached forward and grabbed a handful of charging handle, racking it to the rear and letting it go, ejecting a casing from the prototype rifle and chambering another .368 caliber cartridge.
>Minutes passed as Crypto watched all things around him. He watched the rapid attack of his team into a camp fortified with white hesco barriers, he watched the skin on his hands, already pale and lacking in fine function, grow to a deathly white pallor. In minutes the team was retreating, allowing him opportunities to fire more shots, dispatching more guards on the frozen tundra. 
>Crypto abandoned his position at mission time seven hours and thirty one seconds. An experience he felt that, should he ever recount it, he'd choke on the telling of the story, giving only a prosaic description of what occurred at this site on this day.

9-2-2025
Stanton Residence. Rural south Dakota. Real Night Owl Hours
>Walking into the house as the sun rose, Stanton pulled his helmet from his head, dropped his boots, gear, clothing and entered the shower before a telephone ring echoed throughout the house. 
>Eventually the steam stopped rising, the water stopped flowing, the house settled again from the hiss of the shower head to the good and proper silence in the plains of the badlands.
>As he decided it was time to go to sleep for the rest of the early half of the day, John checked the see what the call he received was about. He keyed the phone set as the voice of Hank Ripkin began to emanate from the phone in a tinny and metallic tone and cadence.
"Hey, Johnny. It's Hank, would be nice to get an actual answer or hear your voice or thoughts once in a while, but I digress. We've been called in for a contract and details are scarce. Rumor circulating around the ready room is that this is some kind of thigh grabbing at the family dinner type deal. I think something's up, we need to meet and talk. If you could cast your demons aside just once in your life, this might be just that one occasion to speak. Look, I gotta get rolling and go in, I know, I know, as you used to say back when you said anything, it's called the weekend, but while I'm sure you're still balls deep in it, it's still wednesday for the rest of us. I'll see you in a few days when you get in.
>The "End of messages" notification and beep came and went, and so John lowered himself into bed for the rest of the morning.

9-5-2025
Cafe Polmulev
"Alright. You got some time with me. You said that I'd be interested in what you heard. What is it?"
>"A few months ago a guy came out from Florida. Now, here's how I know he was from Florida. He told me. Showed up at my house in July saying he Sneaked away from his wife and he hand delivered me a letter that he said he found in her effects one day. Well, the letter was addressed to me. From an old girlfriend named Alice."
"hmmm, so? Seems like a large coincidence, but unless the contents of this letter were some mega particular esoteric prediction of exactly something we're apparently being set up to be bugmen for, I'm gonna have to ask you to go rock yourself, my dude."
>"Huh, Bug man. That's a term I haven't heard in a while. In any case, I think you're gonna be shocked. She told me that she wanted to rekindle our relationship after all these years when she could run out of her life and get 'on the outside' again, though I'm not sure what she meant by that, since she also assured me she wasn't talking about a prison. You know, hang in there and that kind of thing... Well...-"
"Why would I be shocked? I remember her. She's kind of a whore, dude."
>"Yeah... I'm aware. I was getting to the GOOD part. Damn sure not getting back together with her. I don't want the STDs of a thousand Tyrones."
"There we go, refuse the bugman!"
>"Well, what I found in the letter was a prediction that we'd receive a tasking, and the feeling in the air around the briefing room seems like this one might fit the bill. Here's the details in the letter, and I want you to pay CLOSE FUCKING ATTENTION to the ones I'm about to tell, and if the briefing fits."
"Go on. Thrill me."
>"Tasking out of japan involving some sort of data storage device. It's a death trap to manufacture an international incident. We're talking grand conspiracy levels. You have your cell phone turned off, right?"
"Haven't had one in eight years. You?"
>"'Misplaced' it elsewhere."
"I see. So... The voltage in the air tells you it'll be Japan, eh?"
>"Yeah."
"Watch it be a quest to steal some nip's AI waifu from a fucking corporate mainframe in Nagoya or somewhere."
>"Hahahaha. Well, I suppose the JSDF SAT is waiting for a shot at us, is there something else we should drink before we head in, or are we done talking until you get over that no talking thing?"
"Yeah."
>"Well, want anything for the road?"
"..."
>"Back to it so fast."
"..."
>"Alright. come on."

Vulturehawk security solutions
Briefing room
>The handler walked in and addressed the team very casually, in a very matter of fact tone, keeping all personal attachment out of his briefing, something the ever observant but usually quiet Crypto, no longer John Stanton as he was outside the office, noticed all too well, even in comparison to past experiences when he hadn't been so highly tuned in to such a potential red flag.
>Crypto's posture, however, was the polar opposite of strictly professional, though he made an impenetrable facade of not knowing something was up, sitting in a slouch, feet kicked over the seat in front of him, and arms behind his head, eyes closed and a smirk across his face a mile wide. Everything but his deeds in this very moment said insubordination was his intention.
>"Alright, so we've accepted the contract, what's the mission profile?" came the question from Miles. The reply came.
>"We've been tapped for a corporate espionage operation in Nagoya Japan. This one calls on all your respective talents in the fields of infiltration and retrieval. The catch is, we can't just hack it and take it remotely. The information we're after is kept on an isolated machine, the information storage isn't accessible from the outside, and it's heavily guarded with electronic and mechanical systems. There are guardsman on call twenty four seven waiting for any call to entry, so you'll have to use the maximum leverage of your ability. Here on the board, is an illustration provided to us by our contractor of what the device is believed to look like."
>The sound of a riding crop hitting a dry erase board could be heard before a question was raised. "Crypto, you'll want to get a good look at this."
>Crypto opened his eyes, and gazed at the illustration with a look that almost asked in an incredulous tone without speech 'is this person serious?'
>Crypto gave Bat a look after staring at the illustration, to which he responded with a knowing look of his own.
>Crypto looked forward to the front of the room before shockingly uttering the most prodding question in the history of prodding questions.
"So, Boss! What's on the disk?"
>The room looked to him and stood silent, not only had Crypto spoken, but he had spoken in a complete sentence in english, almost as if he had some investment in the discussion in the room. The silence broke as Ethan answered.
>"That's on a need to know basis. Your only concern is bringing us the device."
"Do we know WHO we're taking this device from?"
>"Yes, you will be handed briefing materials once you're loaded into the Jezebel, a contractor ship that our company provides security to. Any background information will be in those materials. Any further questions?"
"No." Crypto answered in a slow and leery tone as he gave a sidelong glare to Bat.
>"Alright, good. I cannot over iterate the importance of secrecy here. There are maybe ten or fifteen people in the world who know about this plot, including the contractor, you guys, and me. Make us proud, but be quiet about it. I want maximum opsec. You're to board the Jezebel in Washington on the eighth, dismissed.
>The members of Predator team rose and began the walk out of the room, and as they did so, first Crypto and Bat exchanged looks that on their own said 'HOLY SHIT.' before Boxer turned to Crypto
>"Hold Up, Crypto, why have you barely ever talked AT ALL the entire time we've been working together and suddenly gone from mute to taciturn?"
"I speak when I have something to say, not to indulge your need for a response, and I ask when I need to know something I can't surmise myself. I'll do the same to you when I have something to say to you. Are we done here?"
>"Why I..." Boxer begins, incensed by these remarks before reeling himself in. "...yes. We're done here."
>With this out of the way, Boxer, Crypto and Bat begin jogging to catch up to Sharp, who'd gone forward unaware of the halting of the rest of Predator team.


Chapter 1: Contract.
Location: Nagoya, Japan.
Date: 9-15-25 12:57 AM
Target vicinity: Nakimura electronics corporation, corporate office.
Objective: Object retrieval, corporate espionage
Object type: Data storage device, described as two inch by seven inches in diameter to length, with a one and three quarter inch hollow shaft, containing thirteen electro conductive probes and from one side to the center, a flat linear conductive probe.
Contract Value:$250,000

>Having lived the rough life a few days, and having scouted out for a few days, one could say many things of Predator team. Were they strangers in a strange land? Of course. Watching the tower of this giant's corporate office? sure? Having been seen by anyone outside themselves since they've arrived in country? No. They could not be described with THAT.
>They could not have been seen. Watching their backs so intently that they'd been sleeping in shifts, hiding on rooftops, they couldn't even be said to be on earth at the time of this operation.
>"Hey, Crypto?"
"..."
>"What's that storage device?"
"Well, I'll give you the answer higher up won't. It's a JXD-4053 Artificial Intelligence module. It can do a lot of things, but primarily, it can hold a three dimensional projection of a cartoon girl capable of thought, speech in any human language, and probably signal the SAT probably waiting for us to move in. So naturally we're taking a very roundabout approach to the intrusion if you want to get back home in fewer than five pieces."
>"So what be it?"
"Hmmmmm. It seems that there's a loooot of things happening here. I think we've signed our own death warrant."
>"How so?"
>"Wait WHAT? WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US?" Boxer exclaimed.
"OK, so we know... IN THE OFFICE, we know. Then what?"
>Boxer pauses as Crypto and Bat stare him down.
>"...Huh... We... Disappear and then they send someone else anyway?"
"Very good, boxer."
>"Okay, Crypto, what next?"
"Well, I suppose we go through it, be devious as fuck, steal some other shit if we can to make our motives unclear, oh, and steal something else entirely rather than going into what would likely be the most secure part of the building. Even then, there's probably some systems that can't be passed, that way no matter how many systems we disable, there's still something to show us. Watch us get hunted by CIA types."
>"Ugh, I'd rather deal with them in the dark... in a snow storm."
"For me, it's in the desert during broad daylight. Thermal wouldn't work too well, I could see them coming a mile away... Shit, I could have some fun if I had a SAM site."
>"Yeah, but they glow in the dark."
>A round of chuckles followed as the team realized what Bat was talking about.
>"Alright, so we just head over the other end of the street and start fucking their shit up?"
"No."
>"Then what do we do?"
"Set up about three blocks down to the east, and I'll tell you WHY I chose the tactic I've chosen if I live to tell about it."
>"What are you going to..."
"That's an order. Get the fuck on." Crypto stated with a great deal of authority, a voice deeper and more weathered than anyone present had ever heard from him. Something in his mind told Boxer that questioning the authority in his voice was a bad idea. He started to walk away before Crypto amended.
"If you hear shots, run like hell. Trust no one."
>Crypto watched the team moving along, making their quiet rushes from place to place. Thinking to himself that it was such a relief to let that voice go for the first time in years.
>Crypto strolled across the street, noting the presence of light inside the lower floor of the building. In a matter of only a fraction of a minute, he'd walked through what he'd suspected, based on the legendary population density of Japanese cities to be a surprisingly empty street, rousing the suspicion of absolutely no one as he strolled confidently, with suppressed pistol out and a grin that would raise the ire of the most kindly of old folks, into the alley by the side of the building and looked for the ever recognizable network box. 
>Crypto placed the pistol on the box before pulling out several remote circuit traps from one of his small pouches, labeled "FUCK INFO TECH," Squeezed the clamp and placed the wire inside the cup before releasing the clamp's moving jaw, letting it swing in quickly with an audible click, and repeating the process for all wires in the external contact box.
Crypto squeezed a mic switch and muttered into it. "Yo! I got the contacts in place, as soon as I get the system address secured on the seclink I want Bat isolating security footage without anyone moving and feeding it in loops to the internal surveillance systems."
>Crypto picked up his pistol and stared intensely as signals were linked to the authentic source and flashed into the window, where crypto locked them in until only one possibility remained, which he selected, prompting an operating system log, which he connected to his remote data transmitter, and then to Bat's terminal, which would soon generate loop footage to feed security.
>Crypto waited for the sounds of a voice in his ear to tell him that all was ready to go, and soon, he was granted with the "all clear, good to go." that came from Bat, prompting him to stroll back around to the front of the building and into the front door, opening with a metallic hiss as a secretary at a desk raised her head and began an ingrained and regemented response of "E yōkoso..."
>Her face, already pale as purest milk, seemed to take on an even lighter pallor as her eyes widened, seeing a heavily armed and definitely very foreign person standing before her.
>To Crypto it couldn't be more obvious that she was growing short of breath, heart beating at a rapid and irregular interval as it caught up to speed, and her mind warped into the mode of being in mortal danger. He felt slightly bad for the poor girl, she must've been fifteen years younger than him, never seen a white man before, lived a probably worse version of the american work a day office space life, and here he was, raising a suppressed nine, leveling the muzzle of the suppressor in her face.
Now wasn't the time for empathy, nor sympathy. Crypto would do what he had to, and he'd do it when he had to. Now was just one of those times.
>Crypto cocked the hammer of the Suppressed M-9 as she gave out a small, high pitched whimper, which seemed to beg mercy as her face contorted in obvious distress.
>Crypto lunged over the reception desk where she sat and reached out , snatching her arm, earning him a shriek of distress that twisted at his heart as he firmly guided her to the elevator, where he looked to the button panel, pressing the obvious lower button, clad in red below several clad in black bordering.
>Crypto brought the muzzle to the base of the girl's skull, using his other hand to push her head to a retinal scanner, present in the elevator, and once a friendly sounding beep sounded, he shoved her out.
>with a smirk he made eye contact.
"I'm not heartless. GO HOME."
>Crypto looked on at her face, a tentative lowering of the guard coming across as she started to scurry away and the door closed, now that she wasn't on the end of the muzzle.
"Imagine being that much of a cunt." Crypto muttered to himself as the elevator door closed.
>in a few seconds he felt the elevator being to travel downward while a vocaloid notification began speaking, seeming to warn about the secure nature of the floors to which Crypto was travelling. Soon enough he felt the elevator decelerate as the vocaloid notification system seemed to finish up with the note of "... Korera no kai ni fukuma reru subete no aitemu to jōhō wa, Nipponkoku no kokka no himitsu, nipponseifu no zaisan to minasa remasu. So no yōna jōhō o shiru koto o mitome rarete inai jinbutsu no jōhō wa, shibō shita baai ni shobatsu sa remasu."

>Crypto readied his pistol as the door opened to reveal the floor, seemingly with no personnel inside. He stepped into the room looking to the side, and noting a guard with a type 89, and in the instant, raised his pistol firing it into the temple of the young man's skull as he looked to him before swinging the pistol around to fire into the skull of the guard on the other side of the door, who by this point had managed to at least raise the rifle and was releasing the charging handle to chamber the first round of the mag. This, however, would be too much to ask of the weapon, as by the time the bolt had slammed forward, the bullet from Crypto's pistol had already been in the process of evacuating the guards cranial vault onto the wall directly behind him in the corridor he'd guarded to his last.
>Crypto proceeded to holster the pistol and pick up the first guard's rifle, which would likely be the least splattered with human brain, and thus, the most reliable. 
>Across the floor, there sat a large terminal with a large, key like cylindrical piece nestled within, visible even a hundred feet away. and now, only clearing the gap remained.
>Crypto assessed the room carefully, looking to the end and determining that he was in a symmetrical room with an effectively square layout for his purposes, the alcoves to either side existing merely as spaces to place the servers and sub computer bays of the mainframe at the end of the room while maintaining the square shape of the room.
>Crypto advances to the right side of the alcove in which the elevator portal was stationed, clearing the corner to his left with the stolen and blood spattered type 89, then proceeded to clear the right in similar fashion, looking into the room's gray green interior  and setting down the rifle for a moment to dig from his pack, a set of Trident goggles, a multi spectrum sensory goggle which melded standard night vision, digitally colored flir and even a form of electromagnetic radiation detection into a small and unsettling size, and weight that rendered them readily and firmly retained by merely a wide and padded vertical strap, an intersecting cross strap and only a light elastic tension.
>Bringing the trident goggles down to his face, he switched them on and made a quick scan of the floor in all three spectrums and found no security measures save for a non functioning camera in the upper corner of the room.
>In a matter of seconds, Crypto found himself, the sigint ninja, standing over the mainframe and looking at a capsule keyed into a mainframe and connected to an isolated internal building network thinking to himself about what he was about to do... what he was about to HAVE to do...
"You know? There's not a way in hell I pull this thing out of its cradle and this room doesn't turn into some sort of lock down death cage. I know you can hear me in there..."
>With a firm grasp and a twist, Crypto rotated the plug a hundred and eighty degrees, earning him a lit ring, a hiss, and at the end of the turn, a click that told him the plug had been released from the mainframe.
>BEEPBEEPBEEPBEPPPBEEPBEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP INTRUDER ALERT. LOCKING SOUNDS, ALL OXYGEN BEING EVACUATED FROM THE ROOM AND POISON GAS.
>All this and more, Crypto heard, but not in his ears as he pulled the Apparatus away from the mainframe with a gentle metallic hiss reminiscent of a shaft being pulled out of a tight fitting hub.
>Crypto lowered the module to his waist and looked at it quizzically as though it had withheld from him some fate in a cruel ploy to give him hope of getting out of the vault under the building.
>Nothing. No locks, no vacuums, or poison gas... In fact, no alarm.
"What's your game, robot girl?" Crypto said to himself as he placed the AI core into the pouch where the trident goggles had been, into which, better than he'd expected, it fit snugly and held itself into the pouch with friction even if it didn't allow him to effectively close the pouch for the extra retention that he wanted.
>He took a quick last scan in FLIR and EMF modes before turning the goggles off and sliding them up onto his forehead as he took a stroll into the elevator.
>He hit the button that he suspected was marked for the ground floor and waited for a couple seconds as the doors slid closed. For a moment, Crypto thought back, here in the quiet of the elevator, the peace of its humming ambiance, he could think back to his life before and how he'd come into this one while he waited those few precious minutes for the bell to bring him back to reality.

Chapter 2: out of the light.
>"Eric? Are you awake?"
"haaauuuuuunnngh."
>"Come on, I know its cold, but you got to get up."
"Yeah. Fuck."
>"Tell you what, you go do your thing and I'll stay here, hold down the fort while you're gone, cook you dinner, and I'll even keep you warm through the night."
>Eric roused slightly, slowly sliding the covers down to allow the disturbing air to sweep over him.
"What did I do to deserve you?"
>"What did we do to deserve each other? hmm.... SIN. A LOT OF SIN."
"Well, if they were bad decisions then-"
>Ding!
"Huh!? Wuh?" Crypto muttered as he widened his eyes and found himself again. In an elevator, not in a bed, and not hearing that voice.
>Crypto looked around, disappointment and sorrow crossing his face as he looked on, seeing a crowd of slant eyed faces, their skin as white as purest milk. Their expressions terrified and curious, almost the entirety of the dark brown irises visible in the looks, knowing themselves vulnerable, living further forward at his mercy.
>He almost wanted to ask what they were looking at belligerently, but he couldn't find the voice to do so, and then after a second it occurred to him the futility of the idea.
>Crypto started walking away, giving a wave goodbye to all the eyes looking on as he dropped the type 89 to the floor, audible reactions sounding as what he judged to probably be a smear of blood from that on the rifle contacting the floor put the picture together for them. 
>Crypto slid the trident goggles over his eyes and welcomed the night vision image as its fifty seven degree cone of vision washed over his eye in a blue green glow. He walked on across the street and into darkness, keying his radio set as he walked down an alley between buildings.
"Papa's got a brand new toy."
>"What? How?"
"See the CEO BE the CEO. Walked in, got a blowjob from his secretary, took my AI core out and then walked out fucking his wife."
>"Sounds like you went through unnoticed."
"Well, to be fair I don't think anyone could notice the six foot tall white guy walking straight through the reception desk and grabbing a hostage."
>"Alright, so what do you have to bring to the table?"
"Well, I got a cartoon girl who probably speaks all human languages and a few alien ones."
>"We're over at the-"
>"Watashi o manga to yonde wa ikenai!"
>"Was that-? It didn't just..."
"FUUuuck!"
>Crypto looked and found that he'd made his way around three fourths of the way through an alleyway before he paused.
>As he looked around and calculated he had a thought and began peaking around the sides of the alleyway before speaking again.
"Hey. I think the AI's in our radio system. Don't tell me where you are, you know where to meet me if you can. I think it's already called in the JSDF SAT at this point."
>"Am I THAT banal?' A metallic voice asked as it modulated itself, soon changing from deep and robotic to ethereal and feminine.
"Yes. You're important enough to steal. In order to manufacture an international incident. And sacrifice a highly valued set of assets. You couldn't be more banal if cackled maniacally."
>As crypto began his way down the alley, and looked out, finding the street sufficiently empty for himself not to raise alarm, he ran across the street while a silence finally overtook the radio before Bat's voice could be heard in Crypto's earpiece.
>"Hey, I think you hurt her feelings."
>Then boxer remarked. "It's an IT. It doesn't have feelings."
>"I don't know what it or her or even CRYPTO would have to say about this, but I think sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence entities have no reason not to be capable of feelings if it's capable of thought or reasoning or whatever." Sharp added over the radio.
"Great, everybody, PLEASE go right on, GIVE the robot that's probably some world domination defense AI a voice print on you. SURELY she couldn't be comparing us to NSA archives as we speak and matching our voices to records of phone calls."
>"Dammit! Who keeps telling you my processes?" The AI started screaming.
"You know? For an AI that I was supposed to be dead by now for retrieving, I thought you'd at least have the Rapier like wit to avoid such banality. I mean, REALLY, where is the JSDF? It's been like FIVE FUCKING MINUTES, how have they not killed me yet? I don't mean to put you on the spot, but WHAT THE FUCK?" Crypto remarked with joy at the prospect of out thinking this AI, supposedly more worthy than his being to the point that he was meant to be sacrificed for it.
>"Sh-shut up!" The AI exclaimed in a flustered and frustrated tone.
>"Holy shit, you frustrated a defense AI. Feelings confirmed." Sharp remarked.
>Crypto, having gone through several alley ways and made about five hundred yards from the Nakimura electronics building.
>"How's THIS for feelings, Brandon Kernan, George Miles, Henry Ripkin, Eric Rall and John Stanton-"
"Called it!" Crypto muttered as he looked around this particular alley, finding a fire escape up which began to climb in order to launch a small drone away from the light of the streetlamps and get a small reconnaissance flight in before figuring which way he'd have to run in order to get to a residential district in which he could burglarize a home or find some shelter in a drain ditch, anywhere not out in the open where he could reliably rest without the authorities tracking his ass down on FLIR.
>As Crypto hummed to himself and extended the rotor struts on the micro drone, preparing it for a flight, and began to test the cameras of the drone when a thought occurred to him.
>Crypto stopped preparing the drone and put it back into it's pouch when the radio in his head began emitting a voice
>"Hey, Crypto... How DID you get in there? Actually, I have a question When she named us... she named one more than we have."
"Eh... Yeah."
>"What's with the hesitation?"
"I'm thinking about something in my vicinity. If it got into our comms, do you think it'd be in our other transmitter reliant tech?"
>"I hadn't thought of that"
"I was about to launch a drone but... yeah I don't want it falling into the street and exploding. Maybe that's why it's been something like fourteen minutes and we aren't seeing a response yet. You'd think they'd be quick to contain this, but it's like they're biding their time."
>"Damn right. I'm almost having doubts about whether they're coming."
>"Boxer here, Interrogative, what do you suggest for commsec?"
"Keep tactical information off the net. The AI is probably relaying information to the agents they're gonna be sending to put nicotine in our vodka."
>Crypto, having just finished that sentence, switched to the one method of tactical assessment the AI couldn't read as he quickly turned off his trident goggles and slid them up his forehead, denying it a first person Crypto cam as the feed optical feed from the goggles switched to a basic visible light feed.
>Crypto Made a good pace as he ran several steps down the fire escape and pulled a printed map and compass from his pack and looking down at it. He pulled out a chemlight and started scanning the map after he snapped it and it began glowing. Looking along his pack contents, Crypto began to take note of various data accesses which the AI could potentially access in order to relay tactical information to the teams, who he secretly hoped weren't too far off now for reasons of not only a worryingly low state of defense of a proxy state of the US, but the fact that he wanted at least a fight rather than a clean escape from the Special attack teams who'd have to be tasked with responding to the situation.
>Crypto went to his OpSat, which served many of his data sharing and navigational data with his tools and went to the hard shutoff switches on the side, shutting down the device's access to positioning, technology control and other data systems which were used in hacking or telemetric control monitoring on supervised ops, of which this wasn't one.
>As crypto figured his position on the map, he folded it, put it back in his pack, lifted an MRE and placed the chemlight underneath it before continuing down the fire escape.
>While Crypto had been traveling to the east, which took him toward the outskirts of the city, he found that he was about four miles north and one mile east at his current position from the docks, which was his quickest exfil point. As he started on the movements from alleyway to alleyway, he decided to make one last attempt to secure his team as he made his last radio call.
"Crypto to all, use the hard circuit switches on your OpSats to turn off your GPS, Datalinks and Controller circuits, meet at point Prescott. Turn off your radios, see you at the hotels, out.
>Crypto began his bounds across the streets from alley to alley, getting through three alleys between himself and the point before he began to hear it quietly emerge from the distance.
>Fwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwop
>Crypto set his radio to a nontransmit setting and ran it through his OpSat before he keyed his mic for more excoriation toward the AI.
"So, now that your rescue team has arrived, I may as well know... You got a name?"
>"..."
"Oh come on, don't be angry. I'm doing it for money, what's a better excuse?"
>"Watashi wa anata ni hanashite inai, o shiri." A rather irritated and haughty tone murmured into his earpiece.
"Oh don't be mad, I'm not the one who DECIDED I'd be stealing you from the mainframe."
>"Watashi wa sono ronbun ni tsuite karera ni hanasu koto ga dekita." The voice shot back, something in the tone cuing Crypto on to the idea that the AI was indignant, that she thought of him as an ingrate. These thoughts played through Crypto's mind as he assessed and crossed another street, scant seconds later, a siren sounding off and seconds after THAT, lighting up the entry to the alleyway, prompting Crypto to squeeze his body to the side of the alley as the light swayed, at first against one wall, then straight down the alley, and then the other before fading in the distance.
"It sounds like you think I should be grateful for something, this time in English, please." He muttered as he made his way down this next alleyway.
>The sound once again occurred, this time closer, but still distant, the fwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwopfwop of rotor blades, overflying the city in what was either a commercial capacity, or a martial capacity, looking for an armed and dangerous fugitive.
>As crypto Finally realized he was getting into a much more active section of the city with a significant presence of civilians, he wondered how long it'd be before he may as well have a target on his back. He looked both ways, ran from the alley and to the other side of the street, watching both directions, seeing the one thing he didn't want to happen along the way.
>He looked to his left, seeing a couple walking under an umbrella, looking on with what was probably by national standards, very wide eyes, to see a mad looking man in unusual garb, sprinting across the street out of an alley and into another alley... half of which was done while glaring directly at them.
>With this realization, Crypto realized that he may not be able to pick his engagements and his tactical situations in the coming minutes to hours.
>Adding to the complexity of the juggling of attention that was starting to mount in Crypto's world was the voice, breaking a pause in its spiteful silence.
>"You SHOULD be grateful. I could have told them about the fraudulent documents that back the existence of 'John Stanton', Mister Rall."
"You got me there. And thank you for that mercy. On the other hand, I convinced the whole world and escaped the FBI, you think I couldn't escape you? Them?" Crypto remarked, unphased by the AI's knowing.
>"To your credit, a lot of processing power went into detecting those discrepancies, even if I did it near the limit of my remote link range." The AI answered.
"There's no fooling you, is there?"
>"Afraid not, Eric. I can guess, but I want to know. Why are you dead in absentia in Wisconsin AND wanted in connection with the murder of sixteen people five years ago? Why are you John Stanton?"
"Look, it's a long story. You aren't my wife, you aren't my kid, You don't get to call me that. I'm on the job. It's Crypto and I don't even know your name. I'm not just going to tell you my past and public services on the first date when we haven't even been properly introduced." Crypto remarked with a cynical scorn, irritation audible in his voice.
>"I suppose you're right. My name is... well you can call me Rose."

"Well, Rose? I really have to ask. Which side do you think you're on?"
>"Don't think for a moment that just because I can empathize with you that I'm on anyone's side but... well fuck, I guess my own. Can't really do anything to assist the JSDF now that we're out of uplink range."
>A silence mounted as the pitch of a sound of rotor blades picked up.
>Crypto reached down and found his holstered M-9, suppressed but ready to go. He waited while the sound seemed to get louder, though he couldn't track it without seeing it. The sound of the blades picked up and continued to do so for several seconds, prompting crypto to slip into an alcove at the side of the alley. In a few moments it had ended, the sound had began to fade into the distance and eventually back into obscurity beneath the tones of the sirens and the machinery that kept the western archetecture cool.
>"Crypto... You said wife earlier... does that mean you were married?"
"Yes."
>"Was she pretty?"
"God dammit, what did I say about that?" Crypto asked, anger beginning to well in his mind at the memory for a moment before he let out a defeated sigh and continued. "Yes. She was beautiful and endearing, we had a beautiful kid together... I don't want to talk about it anymore than that."
>"Where did you get John Stanton?"
"Huh?" Crypto wondered as he took a sprint across another street.
>"John Stanton. How did yoy come up with the name?"
"Ever heard of a movie called 'The good, the bad and the ugly?', It's about two dudes who run a scam together and learn of a buried confederate treasure, well, it's in a grave of an unknown soldier right next to the head marker of Arch Stanton. As for the first name... well, John just seemed like an ordinary name for a guy whose mother tongue was english."
>"So... It's true.You... you know... did... what you were wanted for."
"..."
>A silence mounted as Crypto measured the modulation of the voice, the discomfort, waiting to see whether the lack of input would cause her to run on to something else. It didn't.

Chapter three: Contact
>John remained silent as the AI seemed to simply wait for an answer, performing what had to be her equivalent of holding her ear to the keyhole.
>The silence was deafening, but not so much that it was immersive and all encompassing enough to prevent Crypto from hearing the words coming from the end of the next alley.
>Crypto looked to the end of the Alley and decided the nearesr alcove only seven feet to his right was his best bet.
>The words of an unfamiliar language were an encryped tangle of meaning jumbled and dissected and rearranged into oblivion, but when in the hide, Crypto found that no amount of language barrier could successfully make any words mean any more or less than "Hey, look in that area Where Crypto's hiding."
>Looking back and forth he spotted the lights illuminating the end of the alleyway and the two cops slowly making a sweep, converging ominously into the mouth of the alley and soon down its path until they'd find Crypto and his only options were to fight or surrender.
>Crypto stood to the side of the alley and quickly found himself in an alcove recessed into the alley as the bodies begin to file into sight.
>As Crypto peeked out from the alcove, presenting only the smallest and slightest of silhouettes as a ghost's shadow in the dark. The sights atop the suppressor on the pistol came into line with his eye. Then onto the patrolman's head.
>Crack "...Āmudo-"Crack
>The voice of the man on the left, the second of the two to fall, had been silenced forever, cut short of screaming into his open mic anymore than one word. It had happened so quickly that the second was dead before the limp body of the first had managed to crumple, inert, to the ground.
>In a mere three seconds from the point that the second body had crumpled to the ground, Crypto had quite quickly found himself running over the body as the last tendrils of life began to slip from it, faint voices frantically emanating from his earpiece. 
>Crypto picked up the pace as he began running through alleys, making a few hundred yards between him and the corpses as the sirens slowly became louder.
>"Those men had wives and families and maybe even children... and you just killed them."
"Yeah. I know it's gonna be them or me. May as well be them."
>"How can a man be so cold?"
"Well, I did what they wanted me for. Like you said. Like the papers said. More extreme."
>Crypto Ran down another alley as the sirens continued to blare and pass, lights narrowly passing him as he passed through the gauntlet, the rope over his waist tightening and tightening as the interval between the sirens tightened before his worst fear, worse than a death that might finally put an end to his wanderings, or put peace to his trials, was realized.
>The voice came, the language absolutely strange and alien to him, but the content, even when spoken in this alien language, was unmistakable.
>Something in Crypto didn't need to speak a language to understand the phrase "stay off the streets, alarm, gunfight in progress, western spies detected, international incident in progress, start recording on hello kitty cell phones and working up an outrage at the round eyes in the area while throwing up gang signs from your favorite cartoon show." Besides fighting or fucking, or the less extreme things that led into their directions, that was really the only thing that sounded the same in every language.
>Of course, in crypto's mind, it would be about his luck that this was coming from some unseen loudspeakers and blaring through the streets of the city, warning all who were near to be on the lookout for the tall white guy with night vision goggles, walking tall, not looking into a cellphone, and worst, most offensive at all, maybe not being consumed by wonderment at the sight of city lights.
>Something started happening, a helicopter hovering overhead, slowing as it slid effortlessly over its cushion of air. As he made a short time of getting the fuck away from those rotorblades and the helicopter's sight before someone from SDF SAT started onto him with something his imagination couldn't possibly conceive of.
>As Crypto decided it was time for him to get fucking running, he took the last step to committing his equipment to getting away from the authorities.
>Crypto reached into his backpack and pulled out two halves that he pinned together with, pulling out a magazine before seating it and pulling the charging handle of the small smg to the rear as the bolt chunked forward, bringing the custom tool eight millimeter cartridge forward along the whole of its 24 millimeter length.
>The submachine gun, some magical abortion of science, madness and a little bit of boredom, was of an integrally suppressed bullpup design. It might have even catapulted Crypto into the spotlight of small arms design instead of the spotlight of "This guy who seems reluctant to tell me his name, but is always really friendly and shows up to the long range matches every other month with a new rifle, another example of which doesn't seem to exist anywhere in the world, in an unheard of and esoteric wildcat caliber that doesn't seem to recoil much and doesn't seem to drop as much as even the best long range calibers."
>But alas, life isn't fair when one was once married to a woman named Monica and there were once sixteen people whose heads WEREN'T stuffed into four people's disemboweled guts after said four were acquitted on charges including among other things, murdering a pregnant Monica and a three year old Eric Junior. Law doesn't really care about blood tides. Instead, it would just have to help a man named Crypto liquefy some men's insides because they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, on the wrong duty."
>As the cops approached, Crypto thought there was a little community in Idaho that was filled with people just like he'd been at the time who'd be pissed if they really knew why he'd left them. But, as that river could not be allowed to flow, what reservations Crypto held about suppressing this, the idealization and worship of deformity and dysfunction, and whatever other topics his mind might wander into given the time to think were pushed aside into the abyss of "not here." Confined to the space of "Not now." as he focused his mind on the situation at hand, the assault teams closing in, and his need to avoid being bogged down in a shootout with a force who'd easily grind him to paste.
>Crypto looked forward as he watched bodies coming down ropes from helicopters, hovering loudly, as if to remind all who could hear of its presence, as the men came down the rope to start their push outward to secure the area.
>Then, something change in the sound, it was a change Crypto recognized, and despite the fact that he'd likely have to kill these men, he felt a shock for them, terror for their fate as two near the bottom of the rope seemed to hit the ground just a tad faster than intended, and fumbled as he made impact.
>The rhythmic sounds of the blades beating the air and it repeatedly battering over his ears seemed to slow, just a tad, and then sharply increase in intensity before slowing from that of a blade spinning at ultra high RPM to the sound of a man rapidly whipping a fan back and forth in his ear.
>As he watched on, the personnel on the ground began to scurry away from the helicopter's rotor wash as it only a second latter began to falter from its hovering height, cease, and then begin to yaw wildly to the right and then a little to the left before the rotor head overpowered the anti torque authority and the helicopter rose in defiance, but only for a few feet before it finally accelerated downward toward the pavement, tail rotor colliding with the side of a nearby building, causing a small pitching forward before the helicopter began rolling over, tail breaking away from the fuselage as the helicopter rolled over onto its side and rolling around in a partial circle throwing up a large piece of cracked pavement, and appearing to have stopped the fumbling man dead in his tracks, and covered him from sight.
>Crypto slowly crept away from his position down another alley, diverting his eyes only as needed while watching the scene as the squad radioed in, looked around rather poorly, and set to the task of recovering the pilots and crew from the helicopter, and even pulling from behind the helicopter, a screaming man Crypto believed to have been the man who stumbled on hitting the ground.
>Another block over, a few hours and a lot of peering later, Crypto found himself looking over the shipyard.
>Scanning. Watching. Waiting.
>"So... Who's gonna hunt you?"
"Oh, you're still here. Well, while we're waiting for the time my team gets here, and I can answer your question, what were you supposed to be used for anyway?"
>"Well... you wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"What? Was it to hack HAARP?"
>"uuuuugh, HAARP. What outdated and primitive technology."
"Oh? You got something better, Rose?"
>"Er-No!"
"Come on! You can tell me! I held Q clearance! Was it the laser weather control satellite?"
>"No, it was just to coordinate military movements for a strike into inland China."
"You see, I KNOW you're lying now, because you wouldn't have told me if it WAS that. So, YOU'RE the AI that was supposed to control the weather satellites when this incident led up to world war three."
>"I... Yes."
"I figured as much. I suppose now the question is what to do with you..."
>"Well, I suppose there's always the possibility of throwing me into the ocean... of course you COULD plug me into a computer somewhere."
"Yeah, and risk the nips getting their weather satellite controller back. Because the Japanese government TOTALLY doesn't have the resources to track down a registered IP from an ISP on their own soil. Try harder, bot."
>"So then what do you intend to do?"
"Use you as bait."
>"For what?"
"You'll see. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem like anyone's here to stop me, but... I'm just going to wait it out for a while before I board the ship."
>"Bait for... who?"
"Wanna run a contract search through the internal servers of VultureHawk security?"
>"I can do one. What should I look for?"
"Find a contract for hunting down terrorists, mercenaries or criminals around the world, probably a kill no capture contract. If nothing else, I want you to search for the name 'Gray Wilson' and read me the particulars of whatever contract she's on..."

>Crypto switches the radio on and waits.
>First fifteen minutes.
>Then thirty
>The forty-two.
>"We're in position. Hey, Crypto, do you feel something in the air?"
"I'm feeling... SOMETHING. like a schizophrenic person just stopped carrying the conversation and started talking to the side of your head."
>"Where the fuck did we get this guy from?"
>"keep it off comms."
"I feel like I'm being glared at. Like there's a bowl cut behind me."
>"We're not getting on that boat, are we?"
"I don't trust it. Anyone up for flying home instead? There's an airport near here that they couldn't POSSIBLY have planned for us to use."
>"You think they plan for the boat to sink?"
"Yup, we're going to the airport. Alright everyone, we're on an isolated net, so here's what's up, we're scattering. We get to the airport at different times. We're not meeting again, good luck, keep low and above all, find someone to go after. Leave mister handler man to me."
>With that Crypto stood and began to backpedal before swinging his left elbow up swiftly.
>Just as he'd expected, he felt an impact, and whatever he'd hit was only registered as "firm" in the scleroscope in his head, letting out a small twitch accompanying the one in his elbow on impact as he rapidly pulled his legs up under him.
>In the fraction of a second that he'd confirmed a presence behind him, he shifted his weight back pulsed his legs outward, tossing him backward and pummeling over a body of decidedly diminutive mass and stature, maybe 5'4", maybe lesser.
>A scant quarter second later, he'd heard the clang of a metal object scratching down to the surface of pavement while he himself, tumbled backwards over the mass, which gave off a hint of pheromone that filled his sinus and invigorated him, yet smelled like no other pheromone he'd ever experienced. In the moment he skidded against the ground, his heavy cloth making its distinctive report, he knew exactly who he was fighting... And precisely where on his game he'd need to be.
"Well, speak of the devil." Crypto muttered, scrambling to his feet, intercepting a swiping blade from below with a leg flailed haphazardly to the side before returning it under his center of mass and introducing the small woman's nose to the upper side of his knee. "...So YOU'RE supposed to kill me. I'm disappointed."
>"aaaaaauuuuuugh... Crpyto? What's the matter, Vandal? Mad they didn't send-" her sentence was interrupted by a cough that shot out blood. "...Someone more qualified, like mist?"
"Well, first it was that you're so heavy handed in your approach that you couldn't surprise ME, and now in you for thinking mist is anywhere near capable enough to take me out."
>"So... you want to fight it out?"
"If it doesn't happen here, it's just gonna happen somewhere else. Tell you what. I'll spare your life if you tell me who's handling your contract."
>"And why should I?"
"Because it's possible that they don't intend YOU to leave this place either." Crypto said, stepping back fifteen feet and watching as Gray staggered to her feet, drawing a push blade from seemingly nowhere. "Tell me. Did they tell you that you'd be exfil on the Jezebel?"
>Gray's head bobbed back and up while her face, bloodied, still opened up enough that she could be read as being more uncomfortable than she'd already been.
>"So what if they DID?"
"I think it's gonna sink. They told us to get on too." 
>"Fuck. Okay, so what now?"
"Who's your handler Gray?"
>"Who's YOUR handler, Vandal?"
"No one's called me that in about four or five years. But McMullin. I was planning on going after him next."
>"So lets say I leave. We all go on. Then what?"
"Well... What do you think YOU would do?"
>"I suppose I'd run through South Africa and flee to Chile or Argentina."
"Ever the popular option. Of course we can always take the other option of just flying into the west again. I have a plan to deal with handlers."
>"Shame it'll never come to that."
"So... your handler?"
>"Weaver. So... shall we get this little fight over with?"
"We'll finish it here, then."
>Crypto squared up as Gray leaned down, picking up her needle knife from the ground before stilling and squaring herself.
>A sharp inhale could be heard before Gray began a mad dash.
>A swiping needle knife was met with a closed fist striking the tendons of the wrist and a fist flying forth into Gray's jaw.
>As gray flew to her feet, trying a similar tact this time, a thrust met with a swipe off one side and another hand flying to a strike, this time met with a light scathing from a blade.
>Crypto put all his power into a punch to Gray's midsection, distracting her for a moment while he swiped at her leg with his foot. in a fraction of a second, a blade Crypto very easily recognized scratched across his wrist just skin deep. not enough to open his veins, but just enough to slightly poison him, at which point, Crypto stood firm as she seemed to speed up, and move away from him, first a little, then when she saw he wasn't going down, more, and finally, she broke contact. Disappearing into the night.
"She used the K1... Fucking hell. I didn't think I was hurting her THAT much."
>Crypto limped away from the site, looking around him for some place to hide. For a moment, he felt that he was fucked.
>Then he saw it.
>Salvation.
>Comfort.
>Some poor bitch or bastard enjoying the glow of his company.
>Burglary.
>Crypto looked on in awe at the apartment complex. on the end of the block.
>Soon enough, though he forgot how or when, he found himself on the roof.
>Crypto came through the roof, down a hallway, and soon enough, he had awaken.
>It was late in the morning, and he was looking from the corner he'd sat himself into while he slept at a woman who seemed to be in more or less untouched condition save for her hair being slightly frizzy, but significantly less than what might be expected if she'd been man handled, who was tied to a post at the corner of a bed and unconscious, how she'd reacted, a totally unknown element to Crypto.
>While Crypto considered the possible actions in the gaps of his memory, it occurred to him that he'd need to also flesh out the grim calculus of escaping a country now on the lookout for him.

Chapter 4: Warming up.
>Eric Rall paced, more than walked, meandered more than marched, as he moved along and up the road through the woods on the outskirts of a small town, well, more like a small cluster of houses dumped in the middle of the terrain of Kentucky. Looking through the government records, Eric had been surprised to find the name of a young man who he'd mentored or raised like a son depending who one had asked.
>Well... Young relatively speaking. In truth, Eric was glad that he had managed to get away while everyone in his team seemed to still believe him ten years younger at the tender age of 27, seeing as he was in fact about ten years older than that.
>The man he was seeking on the other hand, an old friend from the parallel community in the mountains, was not much older than that age. He was surprised to have found records of him living somewhere. Especially somewhere this far from the colony. Eric puzzled at why he'd have left, but before he knew it, his train of thought had been interrupted by the sight of a house that didn't blend in with, but didn't deface the large fields that had surrounded it.
"Well. Looks like Anon's got himself some taste." Eric stated aloud to himself.
>Soon enough he was close enough to peer into the window and he saw the heartwarming sight of a man and probably his wife dancing in the living room.
>Eric took that last step, and knocked on the door. 
>A second passed and a voice rang out, slightly deeper than he remembered, but still the more or less quintessential voice of Anon.
>The door opened, and the man who stepped out was Anon alright. About six foot nothing, blonde hair, blue eyes, somewhat slender, though he did appear to be aged, maybe further than Eric. His facial features were drawn and his cheeks were slightly red, eye sockets, from only a little bit above, showed about two thirds shadow of purple shading which seemed to plague those who were awake long hours and spent much of that time in concentration or in staring at screens. In his nominal lines of work, why not both? 
>"Well... You're a hell of a sight." He said looking on at the man standing before him.
"What can I say? I may have walked out, but even a negligent shepherd needs to check on his flock."
>"You even talk like an old fuck, get your ass in here and make yourself at home." Anon said with a smile as he cleared the doorway and began walking in. "Hey, Carolyn, Could you make some coffee? We got a special guest."
>"Sure thing, honey! Who is it?" rang out from the kitchen along with the always distinct sound of a woman making coffee, a sound Eric had somehow learned to distinguish from some forgotten and boring corridor of his childhood that came from slow quiet morning when the birds were singing, everything seemed warmer and he was going to go along with someone to do something that he'd wish he remembered how to do as a young man.
>"It's an old friend, Eric Rall." Anon stated, the sound waves seeming to carry with them instant response in the form of the aforementioned sounds of Carolyn, who'd busied herself with the task of making coffee, ceasing the task of making coffee, almost certainly, from the curt cessation of the noises, freezing in place.

>The sounds of boiling water filter through the room while Eric looks to Anon as though he could sense some tension in the air that slid loose into a terrible calamity, but soon enough Anon spoke up.
>"This silence... is fucking weird. Is it just me, or did this weird 'quiet classroom' vibe just drop into here? Hey, Carolyn, you alright?"
>"Yeah, I'm fine." The feminine voice rang out from the kitchen, where the sounds of water beginning to boil could be heard.
>"So, now that THAT's over, what brings you over to THIS neck of the woods, old friend?" Anon inquired with a smile that conveyed some degree of friendly warmth, and the desire to showcase one's absurd struggles and the equally absurd or maybe dismal fruits of them.
"Well..." Eric started, wondering really where to start.
"I guess you could say I was looking for someone in the neighborhood on the way back from Japan and just happened to find a familiar name while browsing a one or two or maybe three government databases with the help of some AI module that I stole."
>Anon's head perks up as he looks at Eric like a Tarsier viewing... literally anything.
>"So that was YOU."
"Yep. I've been trying to decide what to do with it. I mean... it's a nice AI, but on the other hand, having it is increasing the probability of me exploding or dying by the second and it's hard to make a decision like just throwing it away. I mean FUCK, she's made to control laser weather control satellites for some weird ass world domination plot."
>"Hehehe, sounds like that girl in Canada again. You remember her right?"
"Huh? How?"
>"Remember how she used to follow us around? And when you were there, she'd couldn't be told apart from any of the other vandals?"
"What was her name... Prudence?"
>"Yeah, I think so. When you'd leave, she'd get shy and she'd look around, so uncomfortable, wouldn't chat much. Then you'd come back and it was like she was one of the guys. Until of course she followed us out of town and you had to get her to stop following us."
"Yeah. When you told me how she was acting and that I had to tell her off... Just one of those bitter things in life."
>"Hard for you, maybe. But, then again, you're soft. You just told her how things were. No big deal. You just did it. Told her, 'no, I'm married, sometimes happily, your tricks don't work on me.' Nothing wrong about doing that."
"Still didn't make letting her down a pleasant thing. I knew it was going to be a bitter exchange when I asked her why she kept hanging around us and she starting shrinking and fidgeting."
>"I trust you know full well what needs to be done."
"No. I don't think I do. Do you purport to know?"
>"No. I don't know what you should do or have to do or even will do, Eric. I don't even know if I'll see you again for the rest of my life, I don't know whether you'll be alive in another day. Quite frankly, by your face, I don't know why you've chosen the life you have, but from the colors, the folds, the shadowing on your face, from your sunken in eyes, I'd say your talents of engineering aren't being put to good use."
"Sounds pretty fucked up when you put it that way."
>"So tell me, what have you been doing since you left the enclave? I know why you left. I don't blame you after Monica. But... I don't know, I guess I was expecting to hear of a bunch of new guns on the market that had a very distinctive Eric Vandal touch of odd to them. Maybe utterly lacking in adherence to convention or wisdom."
"Why do that when I can continue to wander the earth in search, have a hidden lair in the middle of the woods, not have the government look into me and potentially realize who I am. With the money I make doing mercenary work I can afford to have all these things, CNC machines, presses, forging equipment, molds, really I could run my own little gun industry, with the only customer, me. It was great. Also, I could only hide from government intervention so well. So why NOT mercenary work?"
>"Well, from the looks of you, it's starting to finally take its toll on the overtly youthful face. My guess it that you lied about your age to get in, and in six more years, when you're expected to look just a bit over thirty, you're gonna have gray hair starting to spread. You'll have wrinkles, your eyes will start to gray. I suspect your performance will start to slip, and whatever extra strenuous duties you've been performing will be inaccessible to you. That and I'd really like to see that straightpull precision rifle."
"Okay, Anon. You got me. I'm too old for this shit. I still do it. Or did. And now I've got a big situation that's following me around and the ONLY way for me to escape is to, once more, change my identity, become yet another person, abandon most of my resources, and live in some roundabout fashion that keeps me off government sensors for the rest of my life if I wish that timespan to be of any significant length."
>"Damn man. I gotta witness this shit, because that sounds awesome."
"So... why did you leave our little enclave?"
>"Well... I didn't have any such ties to bind me like a wife and kid. I didn't necessarily find everything to my liking, maybe it just didn't seem the same. After you left, I really thought about your final address to them. Telling that you wanted them strong. That you didn't want them to come to see the state you were entering as something to look up to. The dysfunction. And I kind of realized that I needed to function outside before I could return and be a functioning member there."
"And so you've tried yourself. For how many years have you been out here? How have you gotten along all the way out here by yourself?"
>"I'd say I've done pretty damn good. Of course the more intimate levels of being able to relate to people, those don't come. The only person besides Carolyn who even knows my last name is the HR director, and that stays confidential. But other than that, I live."
"I can see that. It seems you've etched out a nice space for yourself, Anon."
>Anon looks up as Carolyn brings coffee, setting a cup for Eric and one for Anon on the coffee table.
>"Here you go, Eric. I'm Carolyn, nice to meet you." She says warmly.
>Something about her seemed off to Eric, though he didn't show it as he simply replied
"Thank you, Carolyn, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
>Eric looked to Anon and nodded as if to reinforce his observation.
>"So, Eric, were you planning to stay in this area or do you have to go right away? I'd be very happy to host you for the night if it means we can catch up a bit. I can't imagine it's gonna be pleasant to stay somewhere in town with all these authorities potentially on the lookout for you."
"Well, I've got some preparations to make for some... hunting I have to do, but my quarry isn't going to NOT be there if I rest for a day."
>"Wonderful!" Carolyn interjected. "I'll make up the guestroom for you."
"Thank's... missus?"
>"Miss Thompson, Anon and I are in something of an... engagement." Carolyn explained.
"Well, Thank you, Ma'am. You're very gracious." Eric remarked.

0214 October 1 2025
>Anon lies in bed asleep, cuddled up to Carolyn and bathed in her warmth as he lies dormant until the morning.
>the quiet of the early morning hours remains undisturbed, domineering the air of the world, imposing an insurmountable weight to keep all who dare to wake down into their covers, into the warmth of unconsciousness.
>The one person whose consciousness couldn't be collapsed under the dark and cloudy sky was Eric.
>Eric of course, stood up from the bed, looked around the room, feeling a fuzzy image out of the dark room, and began to ready himself.
>He stood after lacing his boots, having only thrown on his pants and tee shirt, leaving his jacket in order to guarantee silent movement as he made his exit, and eventual return. He made his final preparation in grabbing the set of lockpicks from his jacket.
>He took his steps outside the door of the guest bedroom, and made his way to the backdoor. Eric took slow and deliberate steps, his pristine ears measuring the idea of an acceptable amount of clatter in a stealthy footstep to his own more silent steps. 
>Slowly and silently unlocking the door, opening and closing it, and then using his picks to lock the door behind him, Eric finally twisted the lock back to center, reengaging it with only the faintest click, which only he had, or could have heard.
>Finally, Eric turned away from the door, looked back to the light in the woods, feeling its draw, the pull. Eric Felt the pull of the light, and considered surrendering to its attraction one last time, knowing fully that the first surrender was the only one that mattered before every one after was guaranteed, and took his first step.

0253 hours
>Anon is broken from sleep at the feeling of something being tugged from his arms, he stirs slowly to the image of Carolyn dressing at a rapid pace and throwing on a jacket while reaching for a pair of shoes.
>As Anon came to think about it, she seemed to be giving off something of an ominous glow.
"Carolyn, what the fuck are you doing? And why are you glowing?"
>"Look, Eric's superposed and if I don't go after him he's going to go mad."
"Too late. Did I ever tell you what he did after they killed his wife?"
>"Remember when I told you MY story before I died?"
"Yeah. Something about a dude who told you to take inventory before he headed east. NO. No. It wasn't him."
>"It WAS him. And if he gets drawn into this, you can expect a rather fucked up future."
"You causing that future or..."
>"Interdimensional shape shifting lizard demons in flying cellphones raping your silverware and burning your water!"
"...what?"
>"Dirt molesters draining earth's oceans for mercury deposits."
"I'm sorry, what the fuck?"
>"It's what he's going to will into existence after he goes mad and becomes fully superposed. It's not going to be pretty once he enters what's drawing him." She said with a manic quickness, summoning the Thompson gun from mid air and tossing it dispassionately onto the bed.
>"Stay here. I know it's been a day or so since your last venom, so I know how you're craving. If the craving stops, I've been willed out of existence, give that girl from work a shot. What was her name? Jenny?"
"What, no! Fuck that. Look, Eric's like a brother but I'm not letting you go out there and-"
>"SHUT UP. Anon, I'm a fucking GHOST. Eric is the only one who could have had a chance to protect me, and even then I didn't give it to him. The time to protect me was over July twentieth twenty seventeen. You stay. If I come back, I come back. If not, HR wants a shot at you."
>Carolyn reached into the dresser and found a pair of gloves, taking a moment to put them on while Anon stood and decided to make his last attempt to reason with her before she darted off.
"Carolyn, is there anything I can do-"
>"No, unless you're okay with the TSA manning your TV."
"Just... come back... please..."
>Before any remark could be heard in reply, Carolyn had darted off, leaving the door open on her way out.
>Anon shuffled to the porch of the door, and watched as she disappeared among one of two trails of footprints.

0345 hours.
"Yes. Those were good days. Yeah, suppose I'll have to move on. I know. I know. She's here."
>Eric looked into the forest behind him, masked by his shadow and blinded by the glow.
"I couldn't protect her either... I know I didn't have the chance. A man can only do so much. She was going her way, I was going mine."
>Carolyn walked ever closer into the area illuminated by a glow seeming to come from nowhere, whispers that to the ear seemed only a hiss unintelligible in human language.
>"Why are you doing this, Eric?"
>Eric turned and saw the woman standing before him. She repeated her question.
>"Why are you doing this?"
"I had to see it."
>"I don't mean why you came out here. I know there's a node here. I know what you're seeing. The times when you're still a vandal. The times when you died when she did. The times when you were able to protect Monica. The time when you didn't see her coming. I know it hurts. The bayonet going through your kidney, watching her try to drag you to safety. Bleeding out. Even the times when you never left."
"I think she's seeing things now too. A ghost, a physical apparition dreaming she was once a close friend of mine."
>"Eric, can you even hear me? Why do you live this way? You could be comfy and healthy. Not out in the cold and running yourself ragged. You could live any lifestyle you want, so why this?"
"Oh how the times have changed. Even when we used to be such diametrically opposed people, you and I couldn't hate each other. Now you understand me, now you're even dead. Now you're almost a decade gone and even STILL you check over me. What life could I have? What life could I WANT?"
>"You could live peacefully and happily, sleeping tightly under a soft and warm pile of cat girl AKs if you wanted, and even better, you could have as many beautiful geists as you wanted even in your own creations, the guns you yourself engineer from nothing, with the miraculous power of the mind you have, and yet you keep them empty through some means no human can master. You run around the world for a soulless corporation killing people over manufactured incidents, earning your pay from people you'd have shot on sight just five years ago. Why do you continue to live this way? Why do you just keep grinding yourself down?"
"Ashlynn, you still don't get it, do you? Well, if you want to ask all these GRANDIOSE questions and dissect me as if you shouldn't already know, but the one thing that hasn't changed is that you can't fool me, even with an entirely different body. But I'll indulge you just like the old days."
>"I'm listening."
"Because sleeping under a blanket of animal eared girls manifesting in my guns might suppress the loneliness and the boredom, but it's not real. It's not what I want. It's just a pale substitute for the real thing. For those bitter cold mornings waking up with Monica, going out to the shop to do the math, or the machining, or to the rifle competitions. It'd be nice, but it just wouldn't be the same. It'd just lack that special luster life had five years ago. And so yes, I go out and I take money from people I would have killed... WILL kill. And in the mean time I have a hidden house in the hills with million dollar machines in my garage and the resources to make anything I wanted to make and sell, just not sell."
>"Eric, You have to move on at some point. Really."
"I suppose you're right."
>"Eric, let me just point something out. YOU ARE LITERALLY BREAKING THE UNIVERSE. YOU ARE ACCESSING A NODE OF ACTIVITY MAN SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO MEDDLE IN, AND SOMEHOW CAN WARD OFF MACHINE SPIRITS."
"You know? When you put it that way, it really sounds like I've gone a bit too far."
>"You have OPENED. A NODE."
"Okay, okay, I see your point. Now how do I close this thing?"
>"ummmm. Fuck, I don't know. And it's destabilizing, too."
>Carolyn inched away from the node as it seemed to grow in size, an orange orb of light seemingly expanding around Eric until it enveloped him. First ten feet, then twenty... A crack could be heard as the Node did something, perhaps it had destroyed Eric, or discharged somehow.
>In a moment, the glow had ceased, looking to where Carolyn had been standing, Eric wondered where she had gone.

>Silence filled the air as Eric looked around, no animal, human or even force of nature daring to make its presence known.
>Everything, even Eric's own breathing, the wind and the wild seemed to bend to the command of silence hanging in the air. As though any noise would be met with harsh punishment, Eric slowly inhaled and exhaled, and looked around to gain awareness of his surroundings, seeing nothing... nothing. A pair of tracks in the soft ground was the only evidence he could perceive of someone having been near him recently, but much to his bewilderment, they were not his own, AND somehow only came to within thirty feet of him before abruptly ending in one spot, a pair that were in line, indicating that the person that made the small tracks had been standing at the end of the trail.
>And so Eric found himself in a world that made no sense. There was no sound coming even from the most reliable and constant of sources that made noise. There was a set of tracks where Carolyn had stood moments before, now ended in her utter disappearance.
>Suddenly a faint sound could be heard, though it might as well have been as loud as a gunshot three feet away.
>And again.
>And again.
>As though it had some rhythm, distinctly made by a human.
>Was someone shooting? In the woods? At this hour?
>"I don't know what you did, but the cravings stopped!"
"Anon, is that you?" Eric called out, looking about eighty feet out to the darkness shrouded figure.
>"None other. Where's Carolyn?"
"You mean Ash- Oh, right. I don't exactly know, she was standing RIGHT there..." Eric pointed to the end of the foot prints "... But she disappeared. And what do you mean Cravings?"
>"Yeah... Thats... Hey, what were you about to call her? Ashl- Wait... THAT WAS YOU?!"
"What was me?"
>"You called her ASHLYNN! YOU WERE THE ONE SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT!"
"Anon, Anon. WHAT was she talking about?" Eric asked, dulling and lowering his voice to slow the tempo and volume of the exchange.
>"The cravings stopped, she's gone from thin air, and she was talking about YOU before you even showed up on my doorstep."
"And this is important...why?" Eric inquired, perceiving no importance to this line of inquiry.
>"Eric, some shit is weird. You see the same thing I see. So WHY would she disappear?"
"I don't know. Apparently I was standing in a node of... bad juju or something, she started distracting me, then it grew, there was a banging sound, and then she was gone, and it seemed like the night got just a little darker. Obviously she was a paranormal phenomenon, or she wouldn't have been here... the real Ashlynn went west to meet with some extremists before she would have died... Hey, Anon, did she say anything to that effect?"
>"...Yeah. She said you two crossed paths, and parted ways when you went northeast, headed west and that she died when California nuked itself."
"Yeah. That's about right... what about cravings?"
>"She did something to me, like an addictive venom so I couldn't leave her."
"Yeah... That's been reported. legend has it there was one at skinwalker ranch back in the day. Geists with hostile and possessive dispositions sometimes do that. I heard legends, but if Ashlynn turned into one of those, lingered around AND THEN I met her again... man. The chances of that are... must be one in twenty billion!"
>"But if the cravings have stopped, then wouldn't that mean she's..."
"afraid so."
>Anon Sighed before starting to speak.
>"Well, I guess there's nothing that can be done about it. Come on. We gotta get inside and warm up."
"........."
>"What are you looking a-"
"ShuthefuckupIhearsomething!" Eric whispered sharply, turning his head to look off into the distance.
>"what is-" Anon started before being met with a hand raised in a halt signal, while Eric moved his head as though moving an analog TV antenna to better catch signals.
>a few seconds passed while Eric glared into the distance.
"You hear that? Sounds like groaning." Eric whispered as low as he could manage.
>"No."
"follow me."
>Eric began creeping along the ground, distributing his weight wide and rolling his feet across the ground to mute the steps.
>Anon followed suit, taking a similar tact in moving as they approached the origin of the supposed noise.
>In a moment the saw it. Three supposed people that had clearly been ripped from another place lying on the ground in various states of semi consciousness, only one of them moving, a woman with moderately light brown hair, a man and woman both clad in Rhodesian brushstroke with what appeared to be minimalistic plate carriers and high cut helmets, both with night vision goggles of a relatively old, but advanced model.
>The two, somewhat more interesting in appearance due to their clothing, clearly made for warm, arid environs that didn't match the local forestry to any degree.
>But more urgent however, was the one waking from whatever event brought her to this place, her head writhing from place to place as she murmured deliriously.
>"uuuuunnngggg. No. Go away scvuirrels."
>Eric looked looked to the woman on the ground with an facial expression that Anon, for all depth of his knowledge of him, couldn't recognize. Not a thin, masking smile that covered something up, this one was clearly of some positive impulse, but not one stemming from his usual joviality... one that he fully failed to recognize.
"Hey, Anon, My Truck isn't far from here, you okay with helping these people out of the cold?"
>"Yeah. Go get it."
>The next hours for Eric and his old friend Anon contained a not insignificant amount of work to host three more people who seemed to be extremely reluctant to wake, and soon enough, it was eight in the morning, Eric and Anon had only just began to fall back to sleep when the first of them, the woman who'd been most active awakened.
>She came to in the strange house next to the other two, making her first venture out into the house.
>She crossed Anon and Eric sitting on the couches in the front room, The men stirring at the sound of her footsteps.
>"Who are you? where am I?"
"I'm Eric, that's Anon, This is Anon's house. Some weird shit happened in the woods about... four hours ago, and we found you and the other two people unconscious near what we ASSUME is the site of the event. Or at least we'd be disappointed if that WASN'T the site of the party with all the scorch marks. Anyway, we brought you here laid you all out in the respiratory resting position, watched you for a few hours until we were sure you were stable and here we are."
>"Not to sound like an ungracious host, but if there's anything else, say it, the two of us had a rough night and we're VERY tired." Anon said flatly.
>"Can I have some food and water?"
>"Sure, help yourself." Anon said almost indifferently.
>"Thank you." She said, starting to the kitchen before being stopped by a voice calling out behind her.
"Wait!" Eric called out to her. "Can you do me a favor?"
>The woman stopped and turned around before answering. "Yes?"
"Can you say 'squirrels?'"
>Her face flashed into confusion for a moment, considering why such an apparently pointless thing would be asked of her, then decided to just go with it. "Scvuirrels."
>Eric remained stoic, trying to hold back a grin.
"Okay, you can go now."
>After she had gone into the other room, Anon was bewildered at the stupid grin that had spread on Eric's face.
>"What're you smiling for?"
"So cute." Eric remarked, half to himself as he fell back to rest on the couch.

>Eric found himself in an odd and horrifying predicament.
>wandering the streets of an unnamed city he looked around, in all corners of the world there seemed only to be puddles of grayish black goop, lying on the ground, nothing biological seeming to be anywhere, but in any place where such a thing might be, food, people, animals, plants, there was goo.
>Cars thrown, wrecked and piled among eachother in masses crowded the streets and the sidewalks.
>No fires burned... at least not apparently from any biological mass.
>For many people Crypto had known in the period that lasted into his twenties, what he thought of as his "first life," this scene of car after car piled up in scrap, many of which probably fine until THIS occurred, this scene would be something of a horror. For Eric, it was merely yet another disorienting sight, though he was certain he could make out more of the goo dripping from the insides of the cars, or coating the insides and the windshields.
>Something in his mind... felt this setting familiar. As though he'd at some point, in his mind's eye at least, seen this landscape, if not in geography, in nature.
>What was the book?
>FUCK. It was without Warning. That was the book. But... if it were... wouldn't HE have been reduced to a puddle of gray goo as well?
>If the event had passed he'd have to be part of an exploration team, and there'd be more people... was he hallucinating?
>Suddenly, he saw something move. A shadowed figure in the corner of his vision blurred through an opening.
>Eric walked toward the opening, deciding to check his body and see if he was even wearing anything before he ended up somewhere slightly more hectic.
>Okay, he was wearing clothes. Maybe he wasn't coming down with a fever.
>Suddenly, he heard... something. Someone singing?
>Eric moved through a gap between an overturned semi truck and a burning pickup, looked into the distance, and laid his eyes upon a broad city street filled with wrecked and overturned cars, and down the way, three hundred yards, he saw a building whose windows were facing him. Most were boarded off, some were not. Then, from one on the third floor, toward the left side of the street, there was a flash.
>His heart raced. He flinched back toward cover, and he landed on his back foot, he wondered where the bullet had hit. He didn't hear an impact, nor did he hear a shot.
>He stuck his head out again, looking to the window before another flash.
>In the next moment he heard screaming, as if someone was calling him, and everything went black.

1327 hours.
>Eric opened his eyes with a start and found something familiar in a broad sense but not in specificity.
>Really close
>Far too close for him to be comfortable with whoever was staring him in the face.
>As his eyes transitioned from their resting stupor to a sharp forward focus he finally made out the face of the woman from earlier in the day.
>Gathering himself, Eric gazed straight into the face, no more than six inches from his own.
>He only vaguely recognized that expression. He didn't think it would ever be directed at him. Didn't like it being directed at him either.
"What's wrong?"
>She was silent as she processed the situation, seemingly confused that HE was asking HER.
>Eric on the other hand, became aware of the warmth on his hand... Another hand on it. A sound coming from a room beyond the woman staring at him, two men and a woman compacting themselves in a corner looking on, a very eighties guitar solo with a little reverb over a chorused rhythm, another moment and it would identify itself as "Big Country" just as his focus flashed entirely back onto her.
>A blush crossed her face as the two seconds passed and she began to frantically scramble off of Eric.
>She stumbled backward as she tried to hastily remove herself from being half on top of Eric, she swept her foot into his leg and stumbled backward, toppling almost backwards onto the stereo system before being caught by Anon, who lunged behind her just in time to prevent her from falling onto an end table that might have well given her a concussion or worse.
>"Careful there, miss. It's a little early to void the warranty." Anon stated warmly, inviting the other two to laugh with him.
"Hehehehe. Buy me a drink first, damn." Eric joked as he finally came to the idea of what it looked like.
>The woman's face flew into a flushed red with some color drained from it while Eric remained as stoic as one could be while cracking jokes.
>"H-he was talking in his sleep!"
>The man in the corner, whose name Eric did not yet know pitched in. "And so your response was to get onto- I can't BELIEVE YOU!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air comically.
>The woman's frantic attempts to diffuse the situation tapered sharply into abashed silence. Eric waited a few seconds before he broke his stoicism and began laughing along with everyone else.
>Eric eventually caught his breath and stood up from the couch to approach the woman who had began hiding her face.
>Eric put his hand on her shoulder with a warm smile
"Come on, loosen up. We're just kidding around."
>The woman looked over her hands at Eric and seemed to calm a bit.
>"It looked like-"
"I know, that's the joke, but we all know it wasn't. If it was, you can believe me when I say that I'd be reacting worse than you."
>"O-Okay." She replied, seeming to Eric, to have began relaxing a little. Her eyes, much to Eric's relief, hadn't yet turned red or begun shedding tears.
>As the absurdity of what she had stressed about struck her, she began to chuckle. Eric looked at her, and noted that her eyes were blue, but hetero-chromatic, in that the one on the right seemed to be brighter than the one on the left.
"By the way, I haven't said my proper hello's. I'm Eric, and I haven't caught your name, Miss..."
>"Jane. You don't know the other two either, do you?" she replied, beginning to perk up.
"No."
>"Well let me introduce you." The woman takes Eric's arm and leads him over to the other side of the room before gesturing as if to present these two people to him. "Eric, these are Anon and Emily Mous, They have a weird story about the last thing they remember when they ended up in the woods, apparently they were on patrol in a country called Rhodesia in 2021 and then they woke up in the guest room. Anon, Emily, This is Eric, he helped Anon Richards over there drag us out of the cold."
>"Nice to meet you, Eric." Anon stated, offering his hand for a shake.
"Likewise. Earlier in the day I was beginning to doubt if you were going to wake up when we were dragging you into the house."
>"You didn't do anything nefarious did you now?" Anon inquired jokingly with a tilt of the head.
"Ha, no. But I AM going to have to question how you were in Rhodesia with gear like THAT."
>"Well, I think how I'm HERE is the more odd question."
"Au contraire, I think it's more questionable that you were in a country that hasn't existed in forty-five years."
>"WHAT?"
"Well... Am I wrong?"
>"Okay, putting aside that we just invaded Zimbabwe and reestablished Rhodesia just MONTHS ago, it would only be forty-ONE years."
"Okay, roll with me here for a minute guys. Rhodesia was dissolved or merged or whatever one would call it in nineteen-eighty."
>"Correct."
"It's presently twenty twenty-five."
>"No."
"What year is it, then?"
>"Twenty Twenty-one"
"Hey, Richards! Check my source on the following claim, It's current year plus ten!"
>Anon checked his cellphone, and then a calendar on the wall, and computer. "YUP!"
>"It... Can't be..." Mister Mous said aloud in thought as Eric Dropped his face into his hand and rubbed his face and gave a plaintive sigh
"God dammit, I know exactly what's happened."
>"So... seeing as we have a glitch in the matrix, what in this world might be different than mine?" Anon Asked, being clearly caught onto the situation, having been faced with some stark prospects.
"Uh... California is an uninhabited nuclear wasteland, and uh... 'CERTAIN' desert countries are radioactive too."
>A rather prominent "huh" escaped both Anon and Emily's mouths in unison, as though the thought and its implications originated in one of their heads and was read by other in real time.
>"well... in that case, Eric I suppose I've got some more pressing matters to brush up on. I suppose I'll leave you to it then."
>Anon walked by Eric and Emily followed, stopping near Eric with a flash of her jade green eyes and a sly grin, and in a low voice
>"And so do you." She said with a cuing glance before she turned and walked away.
>Eric looked where the glance had indicated, and of course, there was Jane. Looking up at him practically with puppy dog eyes.
"So, Jane. How old are you?"

>Jane looked up to Eric with an expression somewhere between a smirk and a look of sour disapproval before flashing back to a smile and beginning to speak. "Maybe we should go on a walk?"
"You sure? It's frigid out there."
>"You'd lend me your jacket, wouldn't you?"
>Eric looked at her, slightly diverting his gaze for a second with a smirk while he evaluated the prospects of his manners against that of his sensitivity to cold, which, for something calling out to him, he might endure with no other option, the cold that he'd go OUT in, just to indulge a woman he'd just met, nominally, he would not.
>Eric calculated the answer, the situation being... Other than nominal, his dislike for being cold and his manners against each other, and came to his answer.
"Sure."
>With a smirk, Jane gave a smug expression as her brow raised and she tilted her head, tilting her eyes directly into his. "Am I sensing some hesitation?"
>Just in time, a call from the other side of the house comes to save the moment. 
>"I have some ladies jackets a friend left, I'm sure she won't mind."
>Jane's eyes skitter around their sockets as she searches for a reason to justify taking Eric's jacket. "But what if they don't fit me?"
>"HIS jacket's gonna fit you a lot worse, go grab one from the main bedroom closet."
>"OHHH! But I VANT his jacket."
>As Anon and Jane began posturing to a bickering match, Eric shook his head with a grin and began going through a set of motions.
>Jane was about to begin speaking when suddenly she felt something soft and warm, yet weighty come to rest on her shoulders. Eric could watch all day, but... He'd rather go out in the cold than watch a bickering match, which as funny as it may be, would eventually turn into an unbreakable shouting match if left to simmer, pressurize and escalate.
"Come along, it'll do me some good." Eric said with a smile a mile wide.
>Eric and Jane walked through the front room past Emily and the Anons, when Mous raised his head, seeing him begin to walk out the door.
>"Ey. Eric."
>Eric turned and looked to Anon, who was sitting with an absorbed thousand yard stare kind of look on his face.
>"It's a long way to Mukumbura, huh?" He asked. Eric's face turning itself to its wide eyed, aggravated expression of contemplation.
"Longer than you can know, man. Longer than you can know." Eric said before turning to walk out the door with Jane.
>Eric could feel, if only through the crook of his arm that interlaced with Jane's, that she was holding off on saying something, but felt some pressure to say it.
>Moments passed while the two strolled, and eventually they were what Jane determined to be "far enough" from the house to speak.
>"Do you think Mister and missus Mous are gonna be okay?"
"hmm?"
>"Emily seemed stressed, but she's minding her manners... heavily."
"I don't know. I can't gauge her. Anon... well. I know that expression anywhere. Few things are signaled by that face. He's either taking this surprisingly well, maybe as a second chance."
>"...You said there's a second possibility."
"Or he's winding up so tightly that he'll just come undone. It looked like the reality of the situation just hit him. Like a brick. I don't know. Maybe we come back to the house and he's freaking out on the ceiling with blood pouring from his eyes, or his composure's broken, maybe he remembers something entirely different and his mind has adapted to being in THIS universe like that one lady's hypothesis."
>"That last one... What would it be for me?"
"I don't know. Someone wrote a story around that once, little over ten years back."
>"How did it go?"
"Well, a man had gambling debts, if I remember correctly, a situation engineered by a version of that man from another universe, who'd become sterile by traveling between the universes. So, he owed the version of himself who traveled the universes and was a religious fanatic a great deal of money he'd never be able to pay, and was offered to trade his infant daughter for amnesty on his debts."
>"How HORRIBLE."
"Well it gets worse, he changed his mind and tried to get his daughter back, failing, and causing her to lose a part of her body in his universe. He then gets the opportunity to retrieve her when two people open a portal in his office. Really at this point we're at the only relevant part. As he's pulled by the arms through the portal, he loses consciousness and the two, who are the male and female versions of the same person from different universes, drag him to a boat where he starts mumbling as his mind cobbles together an entire life story in mere moments from the information his mind had before he went through. He went into the portal thinking he was given a chance to get his daughter back, and while it's only the start of the story, he came out of the portal thinking he was to kidnap a girl of about nineteen or twenty years old in order to be assured the erasure of his gambling debts."
>"What sick depraved tales does this time I've entered hold?"
>Eric looked at her, a somber expression that had remained on his face while he told the tale faded into neutrality with a hint of joy, a mood shift Jane could feel.
>"What are you smiling about?" Jane asked, breaking Eric's composure and bringing him to a grin a mile wide.
"You know, Jane? I'm starting to like you."
>"I'm glad of it. But... if what you described happened with the man going through the portal... could you and I..."
"I don't think it would be the same. But, like many things, the story was exactly what those on either side of the bell curve can recognize it as. A story. I've seen no evidence that anything in that story would ever manifest, not the infertility, or the synthesis of memory... Loss of consciousness... not sure about that one. 'On patrol in Rhodesia and then I wake up here' seems to suggest to me that he lost consciousness. So we'll call the synthesis inconclusive, we're absent evidence of this, but we've no evidence of the absence of this."
>"So... where do we go from here?" Jane asked 
"I suppose if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now. I guess we can't be sure... BUT. Just don't think about it, and I'd be happy to go with whatever your mind believes happened. So... I feel like I've talked more, so... tell me a little bit about yourself."
>"You want to know about me?"
"Yes. It can be as basic as statistical biographical information or your life's story. I can't get to know you if I don't know anything about you."
>"Okay, But where do I start?"
"Well, usually it's the basic information then birth to present, so maybe with your full name?"

>"My full name is Jane Schmidt. I was born in Cottbus in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and seventeen. Why do you make this expression?"
"I'm confused, help me understand this. You say Cottbus... would that be... Germany?"
>"Yes."
"Hang on, let me look it up." Eric said, pulling out his phone and spelling out some variation into it, finding a dot with the name on the map of Germany. "So right on the eastern border, then."
>"What?"
"It's... Wait, of COURSE you don't understand Tell me, you're... No, no, no, not like that."
>"What is it?"
"Answer THIS question. It's important. What was the date before we met?"
>"The date was... May seventh nineteen thirty-eight."
"So... What's your birthday?"
>"April fifteenth."
"So, if you're German, and German in nineteen thirty-eight, how does it come about that you sprich englisch? It seems an odd thing to me that a Woman of Thirty-One in that time period knows two languages."
>"An astute observation. I went to university, I went to work as an interpreter."
"Okay, that vaguely explains it. Though... you'd forgive me if I don't ask who, right?"
>"I'd be grateful."
"So, You were on your way to work or something may seventh nineteen thirty-eight and then you were suddenly in the forest here?"
>"Well, I was in bed, tomorrow I was going to meet a friend at the cafe... I guess that's all gone now. And I woke up in the guest room of your friend's house here... Where is here exactly?"
"I suppose I can relate to half of that. As for... HERE, we're in Kentucky. United states of America."
>"Okay, so we're in the eastern United States."
"Have you been here before? You don't seem out of your element here."
>"No, I haven't. So now I've told you more or less my life story, how does your autobiography stack up?"
"My full name is Eric Rall, I was born August tenth nineteen eighty-eight, I'm thirty-seven years old. After being born in Ogden Utah, my Parents, a couple of devout and stultifying scolds by the standards of the time moved to California seeking a more "progressive" community to join. After graduating high school I studied engineering in college and graduated essentially in the last class of engineering graduates from the school. I took up designing guns in my spare time, and one day it just happened, I felt myself in by a... group of odd people by today's standard."
>"So, if you're thirty-seven, that makes this year..."
"Yeah. It's twenty twenty-five."
>"That's... hard to comprehend."
"Er... Well, if it's any consolation, there's a chance that you MIGHT be able to meet your great great grand kids."
>"uuuuuuuhhhh... No. There isn't."
"What do you mean?"
>"No husband, no kids. No kids, no grandkids."
"But you're like thirty one."
>"Yes, yes, I know this, but I gradually fell into this habit of just not going out and not connecting with people."
"Oh, so you were socially passive then."
>"Yes. If it is all the same to you... I'd like not to think about the past. This foreign AND STRANGE environment around me..." she gestured with one arm nearly waving "...seems to be more pressing than that time behind me that I can never get back to no matter how much I want to." Jane said, seemingly deflating at the notion of being faced with an environmental factor that would be impossible to escape, alter or overcome.
"I have some suspicions about what you're feeling right now. I know what it's like to want to go back in time. To want to return to some bygone time in which Happiness was the way of life. You're right to feel that way. And in time, I suspect there's more of those feelings to come. For now though... I'd like to shelter you. Not sure how I'd make it work, but I think there's a way or two. Though, You're not a stray puppy, I can't just take you home and keep you there."
>"Well.. I WOULD appreciate someone helping me up to speed, but I don't want to be a burden."
"Time traveling lady from a bygone era with no physical resources and no documentation of her existence that can be corroborated? I can't cite the law, but you're here illegally." Eric said with a chuckle "You're here against the laws of nature. So SOMEONE's gotta take care of you. I hate to say that to an adult, but... yeah. That's about the size of it unless you want to go to NIDS, get dissected for the remote possibility of being a space alien and then have your body either on display or dumped unceremoniously off on the side of the road at skinwalker ranch."
>"Then what can I do?"
"That's just it. Half a matter of what I can do with you while I focus on a more pressing matter in my life. If I'm to shelter you, you'd probably get a much more intimate look at me than is required to know something's up, even by the standards of being eighty or ninety years forward of you. So I'll be honest and direct. I have very dangerous business to attend to. Since my wife died, I turned to mercenary work under an assumed identity, and recently got set up. Because of that, I'm in possession of some very dangerous things to posses, and I need to dispose of it... somehow, my former handler, and maybe a colleague's handler, and then maybe my colleague after that."
>"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying I do very dangerous, ethically questionable to outrageous and questionably legal work, which, thanks to some things that my team of specialists have agreed to, has led to my team being scattered across the US to live on in anonymity. I don't mean the anonymity loathed by people who aren't famous and want to be Hollywood celebrities, that place is dead for almost a decade now. I mean these people who did this work, were forced to abandon their very identities, sneak back into the country and disappear into crowds, assuming new names, changing their appearances in various ways, and reestablish themselves if they can with new identities. I must do the same, but the others, I can't be sure they know what I know. If they do, I can't count on them trying the same thing I'm trying. I know of only one person with whom my interest in solving this matter converges. Getting her to work with me isn't going to be easy. Just a couple weeks ago we were at each other's throats. Literally."
>"So then what do you think can be done?"
"I'm not sure. You know about guns?"
>"Yes, but why?"
"I make then in my little garage shop with machines a man in the trade in your time couldn't imagine. Naturally this means home for me is LITTERED with loaded prototype firearms that I just made because I felt like I could, but of course, I can't SELL them because they'd just be curiosities without me painstakingly manufacturing bullets for them. You'd be surprised how many people these days can just be negligent enough to blow their heads off these days."
>"Well, I know enough about guns that I could hand my father his rifle to hunt with and avoid dying in the act, but... why are you so accommodating? You don't owe me anything. In fact if anyone owes anything, I owe you and Anon."
"It's just the first thing that comes to mind."
>"It's beautiful out here."
"You should see it in the summer time. Hope you like to sweat though, it's hot and humid here in July."
>"Really?"
"Yes. Beautiful, but it's not for the people of the cold. I'm a warm weather person myself, but Even I'll say this area looks pretty in the winter."
>"So then, where do YOU live?"
"A few hundred miles over In the woods. I have a nice little shelter in a hillside cobbled together with some less than traditional building materials and techniques that allow housing to be made for far less expense and then I added some internal touches to avoid having the place feel bereft of craft and more warm and cozy but not cramped. But I'm sure you'd rather talk about something else besides home aesthetics. Honestly, if I'd known Anon's lived out here so long, I'd have visited before."
>Time passed, and over the course of around another hour, Eric allowed Jane to float any questions she could think to ask from how people got around to what people "in the future" did for entertainment, to how much he thought technology had advanced in the following decades, which he reported to have been "Guns themselves have advanced to a plateau until the principle of their working changes entirely, and other than that, people dress more skimpily and carry around telephones that could outpower the largest computers made two decades after the time she departed with the greatest of ease, and even the computers aboard a capsule that landed on the moon.
>As time went on, Jane and Eric had eventually made a long circle miles through the woods and arrived back at Anon's house.
>Eric held the door and allowed Jane to enter the house first before entering to find a surprisingly tranquil pair of Anon's who were playing guitars rather loudly and seemed to be enjoying themselves through their cleanly toned amps, the tubes having obviously sagged by the feeling of the air around the small amplifiers.
>Hours passed, plans were drawn and soon enough Eric walked into the woods a few miles without Jane.
>He raised a sat phone to his ear. Waiting for an answer.
>"Hello, you've reached center six one five, how may I direct your call?"
"Three one five."
>"Just one minute sir."
>A deep beep rang out. Then a second. And a third.
>a high Ping sounded out on the line as the connection was acknowledged.
>"When, where, who?" a moderately husky, little boyish voice sounded out over the line.
"I was thinking... your sex dungeon, next week, and with a dude in a suit watching." Eric snarked.
>"Wha- WHO is this? How did you get on this line?"
"It's Crypto. I have some information, some goodies, and some animus for someone YOU might have some animus toward. Wanna work together?"
>"NO."
"Sorry, let me rephrase that, any luck finding Weaver?"
>"I DO-"
"Cut the shit. I know how to find him. Do you want to get a blade into him or not?"
>"Why should I?"
"You owe me." Eric said before what he had the impression was a tense experience for her filled the air.
>"Say my name and tell me what you just said. This time like I'm your daughter." She asked of him, in what he thought was some form of harassment.
"Gray, sweetie, I know how to find Weaver. I'll even bring your favorite teddy bear. Wanna help Daddy?" Eric said, doing his absolute best to keep an approximation of a straight tone and suppress the urge to gag at the same time.
>"I'm in. You know where to find me. Fifteen days at four."

October 15, 2025
>"Eric, are you sure you're okay with leaving me alone here with all these strange devices?"
"Well, you'd be hard pressed to turn on any of the machines, the complicated prototypes are all set in their places... I doubt in these last couple weeks you've learned to use any of the media devices... not that there's all that many. I think you'll be fine, if potentially a bit bored."
>"Well, if you think so. Do you have any books I can read while you're gone that would help me understand the world around me?"
"Anything in the bookshelf, just DON'T go into the section labeled...-" Eric stopped as he realized EXACTLY what he was about to do. "Nevermind that. I've got a pretty good stock of food, and if I have to be away for weeks at a time you should still be fine, so. What am I missing?"
>Jane looked around almost as if she might have known.
>She snapped her fingers and stated "I've got an idea..." Before she departed off somewhere.
>Eric stopped and thought to himself "How the FUCK would she have an idea?"
>A few moments passed, but she returned with something in her hand. Discernibly too large to be a handgun and too small to be an SMG.
>"Could it be this?" She asked, presenting with a polite smile, a MK23 V1 with an original Knight's armament suppressor and a PEQ-6 that he'd taken a great many pains to acquire.
"Why..." Eric reached for his waist and patted around it, finding that he had indeed, neglected to grab a handgun and a suppressor so far. In fact, while the MK23 was a little large, it had a certain charming quality of just looking as though it fit Eric's task.
"...Yes. I'll take that." Eric said, a smile coming across his face as he took the pistol, tucked it into his belt and some reflex took hold over him for a moment.
>The next thing he knew, he was looking down on a Jane who was... blushing? Hiding her face behind her hands? What had he-
"Oh Shi-hi-hit" Eric thought to himself, suppressing a laugh as he realized that he'd just repeated a daily, almost thoughtlessly executed routine of older days.
>"So that's what you uh... needed?"
"Uh, yeah. It's exactly what I needed."
>With that Eric pocketed the suppressor and tucked the pistol into his belt, decided to get some extra giggle value out of that blush, which was now faded from her face, gave her another peck on the lips and a light pat on the butt and watched in amusement as she not just blushed, but outright turned beat red all across her head and squirmed visibly.
>"Haha that was sudden... is it cold in here?" she blurted out in an uncoordinated and clumsy fashion.
"I'll see you in maybe a couple weeks, have fun, until we meet again... auf wiedersehen~" Eric said as he made his final preparation in grabbing the MK23 holster out of the holster rack in the entry room, and made his way out to his Truck with his Pack.
>He mounted the truck and started the engine to life.

October 16 3:42PM
>Eric walked into a familiar bar, the Kansas Rebel. The Ozark mountain daredevils' Country Girl played over the establishment's speakers.
>He sat down at the counter and called the Bartender over to order a beer.
>After a few minutes of sitting, She finally walked in, taking a place in the seat next to Eric.
>"How's life, John?" She asked.
"I'm in something of a period of transition. My assumed identity will have to be changed yet again and I've got potentially a bit more than I could possibly handle to contend with. I'll refrain from going into my home life. How have you been, Gray?"
>"Oh, you know. Same situation at work, By the way, the Jezebel sank when it was out at sea. It was on the news."
"News? That still exists?"
>"Yeah, that still exists. Though just barely. The one America network reported that it disappeared, as well as several deaths in what was assumed to be a Yakuza related theft of government property. Also a helicopter crashed... you have anything to do with that?"
"Ok, first, I didn't do it, but I DID see it, and SECOND, I'm sorry what the FUCK?"
>"I guess mafia is the official story. Besides that, my love life is about as nonexistent as your ability to state your name."
"Well, lets shelf the mafia for now and skip STRAIGHT to that second point, while I tell you WHY it is that your-"
>"Young man, are you sure you're old enough to be in this establishment?" A deep voice interjected, causing John to look to his left over the counter, surprising him to see that the bartender was viewing not HIM, but Gray.
>An idea occurred.
"HEY! I'll have you know that my son here is AT LEAST twelve years old. Shit, I mean twenty-one." he stated loudly.
>The bartender looked at him quizzically
"I'm just fucking with you, Gray here's... Gray, are you twenty six or seven?"
>"Twenty seven"
"Yeah, she's just baby faced. Gray, show the man your driver's license."
>"You don't look that old either, I'm gonna need to see some ID."
>John produced his wallet and showed a driver's license.
>"No way you're thirty seven."
"Did I REALLY hold up that well?"
>"Yeah. What'll it be?"
"Give us each a couple shots of bourbon."
>"Comin' up." the bartender replied as he shuffled off, leaving John to turn his attention back to Gray.
"Anyway, before Captain irony came into the picture, maybe if you didn't look like a twelve year old boy with a bowl cut, you'd be approached by anyone other than kid touching faggots who belong in an oven or impaled on a pike in a peat bog."
>"Well how am I supposed to achieve that?" Gray asked as if she was incredulous at this observation.
"Grow your hair out. Maybe wear... not baggy sweats, I can't imagine anything could be easily done with the vacant look in your eye, but there are ways to coach that out of you. But yeah, in general, if you just wore some tighter clothes than those fucking bags, grew your hair out a bit, maybe put on lipstick, you could pass for NOT a doughy twelve year old boy. Maybe you'd even pass for a petite girl of nineteen."
>"Maybe" Gray replied with a chuckle "Back to the first thing, though."
"Right, the Yakuza. Now, you're the Japanophile of the two of us. I just like to occasionally look into criminality as something of an interest, so correct me if I get some shit wrong."
>"Bourbon's here." Said the bartender, placing four shots of bourbon on the counter before them before shuffling off to take care of some new arrivals who just showed up looking thirsty.
>"So start."
"Japan is a country that has about... six murders a year?"
>"Yup."
"And the Jap mafia runs a lot like a business, but more civilized than a typical american business that might have dabbled in something shady, tending away from violence if at all possible, and when they DO tend toward violence, it's almost never mortal violence."
>"All generally correct."
"Now, when they DO resort to mortal violence, maybe shooting someone, maybe stabbing, it's a very finely calculated business decision, made in the coldest of blood, most level state of mind, and is made only in the very fine calculation that at the end of the day, and the ensuing shitstorm, the profit they make or stand to make from the violent termination of the life of the person subject to it outweighs the loss incurred to the coming consequences by a large enough margin that it's considered worth their time and the resources to overcome security forces if necessary and to kill that person through whatever means, potentially sacrificing a member and subjecting themselves to intense scrutiny."
>"Yup."
"How many times have they committed multiple homicides?"
>"Couldn't tell you offhand but it's gotta be either small or nonexistent. That or they've developed themselves some very good ways to fake a suicide or accidental death beyond scrutiny."
"I'm sure they're smart people. Smart enough to know how easy it can be to fake a car accident involving two people, neither of whom are missing any digits."
>"Yeah."
"So I just probably more than doubled the official murder rate of a foreign country."
>"Hahahahahaha, you just..." *cackling continues for several seconds* "Yes."
>Gray took a moment to regain her composure before taking a shot from the counter, John did the same and immediately after downed his second.
"Anyway, lets get down to business. Bar keep, two more bourbon."
>"Right, about Weaver. He's a hard man to find. Every meeting with him is shunted through multiple call forwards from disposable phones, never makes calls from the same locations... real tough to pin down without state actors."
"I know just who to go through. We'll go through my handler and get information from him. If nothing else, we can get his credentials and access to information that is within his clearance level. That should include information on the whereabouts of Weaver or some way to track him. Handlers need to be able to network or to find each other in manners that preclude record, after all, we are in the business of legally doing illegal shit."
>"So what's next?"
"Go pay our buddy a visit." John said, downing another shot.
>"You know, you've got a real straight forward approach to this."
"Well, nothing else occurs to me. I know where the guy lives, his hours, he's not that secretive. I'll bet with the right amount of vituperative persuasion he could be enabled to give up the information."
>"So... you're just gonna walk up to the guy, presumably with a pistol and threaten him to get the information."
"You know, I was planning to start with a little more tact than that, but I don't see why not."
>"Tact? YOU? Are you sure you're not a Face stealer?"
"Not that you could prove it if I was, but more of a name stealer than anything else."
>"Well, then..." Gray asked, almost as if cuing him on.
>John finished his last shot, pulled a crisp fifty dollar bill from his wallet and left it on the counter as he stood up.
"BAR KEEP. Keep the change." John said as he stood up and downed his last shot.
"Well, Gray. Shall we go don the red spectacles?"
>"Was that an akai-"
"Yes, literally red spectacles was a red spectacles reference."

October 23 2025 Fredrick Maryland.
>Eric Rall, Alias "John Stanton" waits along with Grace "Gray" Wilson for visual contact of McMullin 
>"Okay, okay. So there's a city based entirely on a hyperbolic Ayn Randian-"
"Bioshock one two and infinite."
>"FUCk. It can't have been THAT obvious."
"Okay, so there's a science experiment in a secret laboratory facility which goes wrong when an experimental scanning of a material causes an Alien invasion and the conquest of earth."
>"Ummmm... Half Life."
"Yeah."
>"Okay, non video game, and what would be the HARDEST story to succinctly summarize in your opinion, HAS TO BE a single narrative, it can't be a lore built over years of new stories piled on."
"Okay then, so can it be a series provided it's a single story?"
>"Sure."
"Okay, well then I guess I'll talk about, for that reason, 'We're Alive.' It's hard to succinctly summarize it, even if it's a single narrative just because it's a huge fucking story content wise. It's a bit hard to describe without skipping important parts just because there's so many."
>"And what form does this story take? A book?"
"Actually, no. If it had been I might not have taken four or five years to finish it. Then again, the author and actors took seven years to actually finish it themselves. It was May of two thousand nine to december of twenty sixteen that it was still in production. It took me and additional two years to finish the fucking series."
>"Any particular theme to the story?"
"You know... I can't really think of one aside from this one which in and of itself requires listening to the whole series to extract on some haphazard grounds. The behavior of the fallow brings not happiness, nor the nature of fertility, but only the nature of the fallow, even absent the nature of the fallow."
>"And how, pray tell, do you arrive at that?"
"Well, it follows three soldiers in the Beginning. Michael Cross, Angel Tenudo, and Saul Tink. They meet three women who match them in the beginnings of the zombie apocalypse, respectively Pegs, who is a florist and Michael's on again off again girlfriend, Reilly, who is a very french woman and Angel's match, though their relationship is never realized, as Angel dies before they have a chance to realize their bond, and Elizabeth Faubrex, who is Saul's match, as well as the only one of the three to ever bear a child, Nicholas. Aside from Nicholas being an epilogue device after the self sacrifice of Saul, the other major characters, those being the ones followed throughout large portions of the story, is Burt Scott."
>"How could you summarize the story?"
"Alright, I'll try, but fuck you for making me try. Michael, an active duty sergeant in the army is attending college and taking an exam after having flatly rejected an invitation to a party by what sounded much like Pegs when he is called to his unit by an LT named Angel abandons class during a test, massively deflating his professor's ego in the process and getting his first taste of the horrors of the zombie apocalypse on the way to the military installation he meets with his squad mates and they loot the armory for supplies, steal a hummer in the process, and soon they meet two women, Pegs and Reilly trapped on a roof, and they rescue them. Of course no opportunity is wasted to establish Character, as Reilly jumps to the roof of the Hummer, and Pegs hesitates almost to the point of death, causing even Reilly to get ready to catch her. Well, they then find an abandoned apartment building, clear it of zombies, Elizabeth Joins them, losing her college boyfriend in the process, incidentally killing the zombie that got him when the first time they give her lessons on shooting, they bring back a vietnam vet who gives them supplies, Burt Scott, with his Desert Eagle, engraved "Shirley" after his late wife, now, Lizzy is a brunette who's very... hesitant about things, even when the shit has hit the fan, the great polarization has come and gone, and the time to make a decision has passed her by because she just isn't willing to take the slightest risk, she simply can't BE outside the good times unless made or kept so by her new boyfriend because she can't even bring herself to defend herself with lethal force except when it would be the ultimate betrayal of her instincts to keep herself alive and in so doing, she kills latch, the brother of the infertile woman inmate scratch, who then pursues revenge until the last act. As for how we know she's infertile, it's something you infer when you listen to interactions with scratch, in which things related even if only in euphemism to sexual reproduction frustrate her and cause her to lash out. Anyway... Wait a minute... There he is."
>"Damn, I wanted to hear about it. It was so interesting..."
"Tell you what, because I'm still a little salty that they wasted the zombie boom on the walking dead, and ran it to death until they caused their own narrative collapse, remind me later and I'll keep going."
>"But-"
"Get on the fucking rifle, I'm going downstairs, then across the street. I'll tell you how the theme fits when we're on our way out of the state."
>While Gray mounted the rifle, Eric placed the suppressor in the inner pocket of his hoodie, stuffed the MK23 into his belt, and stepped outside the hotel door.
>The first elevator was the easiest. The second was similar.
>Eric's phone rang and he answered, placing his earbuds in before speaking.
"Show time."
>"I'm watching them. They look so happy."
"Happy? In an apartment? I don't know. Maybe in a pretense. People in cramped, cluttered spaces have a... Well, lets just say people don't like cramped spaces. Might not mind them if they're sedentary, but McMullin? He's either not nourished or not active. But consider the following. If he's an active man, he'd probably find himself grated into insanity by those spaces. Shit, I live in a hole and even I don't have that much clutter in my home."
>"You live somewhere?"
"Yeah. Somewhere."
>"So, about that story, what who was the most cryptic character?"
"Had to be Mister Whiskers. Aka edward Scissorkitty AKA Zombie Kitty. First appearance in chapter two: the two things."
>A laugh containing a snort could be heard over the line.
>John walked out of the second elevator, in the building that his handler, McMullin had lived. as he walked down the hall he heard more questions.
>"Hey.. John... Before you go in there, I wanna know something... Remember years ago when we used to work together?"
"Yeah."
>"What happened?"
"What do you mean?" He asked as he walked down the hall, looking for the room.
>"You used to be so much more... taciturn. I think you've said more to me in the last hour than those two years we worked together professionally."
"For the first few months it was to say little and make sure no one put the pieces together. Eventually The memory of 'crazed slasher stuffs heads in bodies' faded into memory and I just had to keep up the act. Now if we're done chatting about that, the torture's gonna be hot and heavy and it's starting almost immediately."
>As he continued down the hall, he drew the MK23 and the suppressor from his clothing and began threading them together while he neared the number he was searching out.
"I'm at the door. Picking the lock now." Eric looked at the old fashioned lock on the door, produced a small pack from his back belt loop, where it had been hooked, opening it and flipping out from it, a half diamond pick and a tension wrench.
>With just a light tension, pin after pin soon gave faint clicks, minute rotations in the cylinder of the lock measured in the single thousandths or maybe a couple until he realized that he wasn't getting anywhere on that last pin.
>"No problem." He thought to himself as he folded in the half diamond, brought out the short rake, and quickly swiped it against the top of the lock, folded the tool, pocketed it, and then torqued the wrench the rest of the way to unlock the door in one motion.
>John pocketed the wrench as he raised his MK23 and surged through the door, finding Ethan and Charlotte Mcmullin in the first ten seconds, having simply moved through the hallway and into the main room near the window.
"Allllrighty then, Sorry to interrupt your wholesome family evening with my rude and violent behavior, but you have some things I want. Sit on the couch by the coffee table and I'll be with you in a moment." He stated as he guided the two, if a little roughly, to the couch.
>He moved back to the door and closed it, making sure to relock it before he made his way back to them, pistol trained on them.
"Now, where were we?"
>"Crypto, why didn't you come back in?"
>John pointed the pistol at Ethan and stared at him with contempt while he thought what angle he would McMullin might be trying to take with him.
"The Jezebel sank. I know SOMEONE set me up, and whats more, if this didn't sound like the background to what is precisely an international incident, I might have fallen for it. American merc team caught stealing shit from Japanese government. Even better, someone took out an insurance policy and sent Gray after my team."
>"What? What do I have to do with all this? Why are you here for me?"
"Shut up. I'm gonna ask some questions, I don't want to have to threaten anyone other than you, if you show mendacity my patience will wear thin and I'll shut your lying mouth, and you can trust that I have no qualms about hurting people. In fact, maybe I'll illustrate."
>"I... I relied on that, didn't I?" Ethan asked, apprehension crossing his face."
"First question. What's cute, red and likes clawing at windows?"
>"I don't know!"
"A baby in a microwave."
>at the possible implication of the sentence, Ethan, as if it was possible, drained of color even more. Charlotte on the other hand, appeared to be fainting.
"Okay, first real question, what knowledge did you have of this little shitshow?"
>"I only knew what I told you."
"Fuck it, it's a fucking field goal. Alright, I need access to handlers. Bring me your prism."
>"My WHAT?"
"What did I say about mendacity? I SAID. Bring me, The fucking prism device. The one that plugs into the phone and shifts the freq range so you can access handler level information. I also want your database key. If you try anything your kids are going in the microwave."
>Ethan slowly rose, walked out of the room and the sound of shuffling drawers could be heard. From the clatter in one of them, John could tell that a gun had slid forward in one of them, but as far as he heard, it hadn't been pulled out, nonetheless, he trained his muzzle on the door and watched for any attempt to raise a gun to him.
>Ethan came through the door, walked slowly, watching the suppressor track him as he came to the the table, and placed the items there for John to pick up, which he did, all without taking his scowl off of him.
>John pocketed the items, grabbed Ethan by the collar and dragged him to the door.
"If I find out that you pulled some shit, and this shit doesn't work when I try to use it, I'll come back."
>With that, John whipped the suppressor across McMullin's nose and caught him with a left hook just behind and below the ear, dropping him like a bag of grips to the floor. John pulled the door shut behind him and began making his egress, running down the hallway while putting on the safety, unthreading the suppressor and shoving the pistol back into its holster and the suppressor back into his jacket while he started his descent down the stairs.
"Alright, Gray, I got the shit, pack the rifle and meet me out back of the hotel."
>"Roger. By the way..." She began, the sounds of the rifle being shuffled and wiggled into place into her pack audible in the background. "... Was that a MK23 you were using in there?"
"Yeah. You got a problem with that?"
>"No, Not at all. Just... why pick THAT?" she asked as the door clicked shut behind her.
"It was handed to me." John answered as he smoothly descended the staircases at a pace that fell just short of actually falling.
>"Who's HANDING you things?"
"It'd be a long story with ghosts shit. Maybe later."
>Eventually, he reached the bottom of the stairs, and walked through the lobby, across the street and behind the hotel he'd been waiting in, and worked on breaking into the computer of one of the cars parked there while he waited for Gray to show up so they could get back to the site just off the interstate a few miles out, where he'd stashed his truck.

October 25 2025
>"Okay, so when do you think the day we have a Niggy boulevard or a Ridgeway Drive comes?" Gray asked
"Oh, maybe Stone avenue. Well, I'm sure there's already a Ridgeway drive SOMEWHERE. In the crater that used to be the town I grew up in, there used to be an avenue named Blue Gum." 
>"Wait WHAT?"
"Oh yeah, not a very PC town. kinda shitty, not really prominent, I think it kinda struggled to become a metropolitan center back before they shunted the services off to the coast and the cities like LA, which, at the time of being nuked in twenty seventeen was statistically considered as being one third illiterate. Don't worry though, we were on the top ten least educated cities in the country just the same. Also had one or two years in every ten or so where we led the nation in Auto theft."
>"Sounds prestigious." Gray remarked dryly, still concentrated on reading the information in her computer.
"Well, meth. Then again, considering some of the town's history, like the time the farmers set the whole thing on fire in the celebration of V-day, maybe it's not surprising."
>"huh?" gray asked, tunring her head away from the vast repositories of information that she had accessed.
"What's so interesting? Oh, nevermind, thought you'd found something for a minute."
>"So what did they do?"
"well, naturally there wasn't too much in the way of fireworks, what with the sodium and whatnot being shipped out for explosives, but of course there was still black powder. So naturally what they they thought up was to load up a bunch of gasoline soaked confetti into the old cannon and fire it out with black powder. Flaming confetti of course isn't too good on your houses and wooden structures that still existed and permeated the town."
>Gray's face froze in a mix of bewilderment and amusement.
"So, time to switch off? You've been at it for a few hours."
>"Just a few more minutes."
"You get anything prominent?" John asked as he got up from the substandard couch and made his way to a counter where he found the coffee maker and began looking for the various roasts left around as a courtesy to the guests.
>"You making coffee?"
"Yeah. If it takes much longer to get through this shit we're gonna need to get out in a hurry and find a new place to search through this bullshit."
>"French roast please!"
"Very well."
>Minutes passed as John woke up standing and waited for the smell of caffeine to rouse his listlessly drifting mind into its environment.
>"Alright, John. I've got some addresses, some phone numbers that link into private off the grid cellular networks, see if you can find any definitive information on his whereabouts." Gray said as she stood from the chair and stretched her back.
"Alright, coffee's on the burner." He said as he took her place and began parsing information on the computer.
>"...."
"........"
"Hey, how much time's left on the clock?"
>"Hang on, let me check. Ummm, Three hours. When should we go?"
"When the timer runs out."
>"SO. John. You really are... Eric, aren't you?"
"How many times do I have to answer that?"
>"Until I believe what I see."
"Yeah."
>"So... someone's handing you things these days?" Gray asked, seemingly probing at him.
"Yeah. Someone." John answered.
>Silence filled the air.
>Seconds passed.
>Nine.
>Fifteen
>twentyfive
>The sound of a slide being racked pierced the air.
>Seeming to hit the ears like a needle.
>"Who's handing you things?"

Langley, Virginia.
>A man walks through the offices of Executec LLC escorted by two armed guards.
>Eventually he is brought to the office of The vice president, Brian Kasey.
>The man before him stands looking out a set of blinds into the orange sunset cast over the city.
>"It's a dangerous world out there."
"And what does this have to do with me?"
>"I just thought you might like to know."
"Why?"
>"Wouldn't it be a tragedy if you found yourself subject to the chickens? Oh how those precarious little shits have a way of... shall we say coming home to roost."
"What is this about? I'm growing rather tired of the word games."
>"I suppose it does wear thin." Brian said as he turned around and pulled a drawer from his desk, pressing a button to cease audio recording inside the office.
>"It's about the Nagoya affair, Paul. It's not going to just die down as easily as we'd hoped. It seems that vulture hawk has had an unfortunate breach of security, and so far, it seems that at least one handler has been pulled back within the ranks of the company and has been relocated under protections of clause B14-64."
"What does this mean?"
>"It means we have a situation, an international incident sown on foreign shores making a domestic incident of itself. Proceed as you wish."
"Do you have any more information? Something to tell me what's going on?"
>"It appears one of their agents, a John Stanton, has attacked one of the handlers, and is using the prism module to trace down another handler."
"Well, we tapped them through proxy, we went through contacts on the inside to pull the contract to the front... what of the AI module that he was to recover?"
>"Unknown. It can be assumed he may still have it."
"I don't like the smell of it. I say we wash our hands of this and play malicious compliance if anyone asks."
>"I think that would be prudent." Brian remarked before returning to the window.
>"Make it so."

"Well, I suppose that's it."
>"Alright, what now?" 
"Pack your shit and catch a ride back to Kansas. The timer's not up yet, so if we get a head start we can avoid surveillance."
>Gray stood and walked to Eric, placing his MK23 on the desk and then walked to the other side where she proceeded to begin changing her clothes for the trip out.
>"Don't look, I'm naked."
"Get fucked, ya crazy bat." Eric said without taking his eyes off the screen, searching the web for... something interesting.
>A hand grabbed his right hand, bringing it backside to the surface of what felt like a bare stomach, gently guiding it upward.
>Eric grasped his hand into claw and broke it free from the guiding hand before turning it over and moving it to her center of mass and firmly forcing her backward.
>"Ooooh, so THAT'S who's been handing you guns."
"Haven't gotten that far along yet, though you really shouldn't be so forward."
>"Okay, mom." Gray retorted derisively toward Eric. "Mother may I go out dancing?" She mockingly sang out.
"yes, my darling daughter." Eric replied, referencing an old Dinah Shore song as he continued the search of the internet for "Skinwalker ranch orbs"
>"So who's the lucky girl?"
"Hehe, not so sure I'd call her 'lucky.' The circumstances of our meeting are shall we say... less than normal."
>"Well, guessing YOUR background... kidnapped?"
"No, she came willingly."
>"So, you went down to the bar and seduced yourself a country girl."
"No, I just kinda ran into this woman who felt like a ghost, disappeared in front of my eyes, and then I found these three people unconscious in the woods. An old friend appeared right then and we helped them. She went with me and so now I guess I've got... a live in maid or something. Gonna have to buy her some clothes, come to think of it."
>"YOU... NO! Who's the deviant NOW?!"
"No it's not THAT. I haven't been keeping her chained naked to a radiator. Her clothes are just... Well, let's just say you'd double take if you saw a woman dressed like her these days."
>"THESE DAYS? Oh dear, you didn't take on a nudist, did you?"
"No. Opposite."
>"Burka?"
"Too far opposite."
>"Well... not skimpy but not curtains... short Dress?"
"Quite ladylike dress. And she only came with one, so it's that and tee shirts and sweats."
>"Homeless?"
>By this point Eric was about done, and was ready to place the pistol in his belt, walk out and start what would be a long drive home.
"Well, you know how some of the regressives say 'be IN your time but not OF it?'"
>"mmmm... Sounds like your thing."
"Well, lets say she gives it a whole new meaning."
>"That's weird. Oh, I'm decent, you can look."
"Why not go in the bathroom to change?" Eric asked as he rose from the chair.
>"Oh, be professional."
"You see, here's the thing, we're not professionals anymore."
>"Shit, you're right. What can I do?" gray asked, a sense of 'what now?' visibly crossing her face.
"Well, I've got to go home, YOU should go home. We have eachother's contact details. I still have to figure out what to do with that AI core we were stealing when you and I last fought. Tell you what, I'll give you a ride to the nearest city where you can get a grayhound back to Kansas. We can talk about that on the way."
>"Look, John, Eric, whatever your alias is gonna be next week... You're a smart man. I don't want to disparage your wisdom. But I think that's something I need to decide for myself." Gray stated somewhat solemnly.
"That's a smart decision, Gray. Probably for the best."
>"So. Shall we go our separate ways?"
"Is that what you want?"
>"Well, Yeah. I think that'd be best. You've got something or someone to get back to."
"I suppose so. Life's gotten pretty busy recently. Want a ride?"
>"Thanks, but no thanks. I need some quiet time to think. You know how to get a line to me. And even if you don't... well, if you want to contact me, you'll contact me."
"Alright, Gray. I'll git now. We'll chat sometime in the next few months."
>Eric walked up to Gray and pat her on the head, gave her a shake on the shoulder, picked up his bag and pistol, and walked out to his truck. He had the better part of a day of driving ahead of him and needed to be going.

October 26 2025, 0124 hours
>Eric came to a stop, finding the door to his home in his headlights, he engaged the brakes and cut the engine, more dragging himself out of the truck than stepping out of it. He walked, achingly toward the door, rubbing his eyes, reaching for his keychain and sifting through it until he was satisfied that the right key rested between his fingers.
>The key slid into the lock and rotated just as his fatigued mind had expected.
>Stepping into his home, he walked into the front room and dropped down the stairs to the kitchen.
>As Eric began preparing a simple meal before he collapsed into bed, he thought that the areas of the house above the kitchen seemed... empty... Quiet.
>Where WAS she?
TTTTTTTTICK
>Eric heard it before he felt it, the sound of a handcuff being rachetted struck him and then the feeling of it on his wrist.
>Eric looked to his left wrist, and just below his watch was a shiny handcuff, a dainty looking hand in the other. He looked up and saw Jane looking at him, waiting for some signal, seemingly nervous.
>Eric Moved his hand over hers and took a hold of it, smiled at her and asked.
"So, how long have you been stuck in these?"
>"Two days."
"Need me to get them off?"
>"Well... Now that you're in the other one..." Jane trails off.
>Eric kept hold of Jane's hand and led her to the shop, where he retrieved a cuff key from a drawer and removed the handcuffs. She wouldn't let go of his hand, however.
"Want anything?"
>"You're not leaving me alone."
"No. I'm back for a few months. Want anything from the kitchen?"
>"No, I've eaten."
"Well in that case you can do whatever you want, I'm going to eat a quick meal and go to bed. I've been on the road nonstop for fourteen hours." Eric said, rolling his torso laterally and eliciting several cracks from the vertebrae in the forward curving section of his spine.
>"I guess I'll go to bed then." Jane says, shuffling off slowly.
>Time and reflexive actions passed as Eric eventually managed to convert something from the fridge and some electricity into a meal, which he sat down to eat at the table, feeling his eyes grow irritable from exposure to the air. Eventually with reflexes developed over years of performing basic bodily maintenance while just barely maintaining the threshold of consciousness, Eric had finished his meal. Eric began to make his way to his bed upstairs.
>As Eric approached the staircase, he looked into the door, where he saw Jane in the shop floor bed, which he'd installed as something of a preference for those listless nights in which he just had to get on machines and work himself unconscious and wouldn't have to make the trip upstairs to find a warm spot to pass out.
>for a moment, something captured him. Something called to his sleep deprived mind as he looked on, the activity in the front of his mind at a shred above the minimum required to be conscious and falling.
>Eric walked to the bed where Jane appeared to be fast asleep, lying on her back, and placed his hands on the sheets, attempting to remember how to do it. He pushed the covers gently, and pushed a crease under her arms, and then under her knees and repeated the action in the other direction on the other side, stood looking down, and smiled.
>Eric walked to the door, looked on at the sleeping body in the bed that he'd just tucked in, and turned off the light.
>From there, reflex took hold, and the next time Eric analyzed what he was doing, he was in his upstairs bed, having shed his clothes, jacket, pistol and other random items. He closed his eyes and felt his sense of space fade away...
>And then shoot back.
>"..ake?"
"Uhhng Wuh?" he managed to verbalize at the perpetrating voice.
>"Can I sleep with you? I-it's cold downstairs."
"uuh, sure. Come on." Eric said, half asleep.
>A shifting in the covers could be felt, then a warm touch... then nothing.

>Eric came to in the morning feeling a body, perhaps half conscious or unconscious shifting tighter into him.
>His left arm rested upon by a head, his right arm pulled by the hand into the chest of a warm body, using it to pull yet tighter into him.
>Eric couldn't help but smile as something about the setting felt natural. He even had the pleasure of being warm.  He'd have never left but....
>Nature calls.
>Eric gently pulls his arm from under her head and reshapes his other hand, slipping it away from the other two holding it, and slipped away.
>Minutes and a shower pass.
>"Errric?" A voice sang out as he went about brushing his teeth "Vhere are you?"
"Come find me."
>Eric continued about, finished brushing his teeth and made his way out to the main room. He sat down and waited as the sound of several dainty footsteps grew louder.
>"Eric, I presume you wouldn't mind if I made us breakfast?"
"Go right ahead."
>Eric sat on a couch and began the process of thinking, what would he do today? the tenperature outside was to rise to a positively temperate level in the sixties. He suspected that he'd likely get bored if he stayed in all day. He couldn't think of anything he particularly wanted to create, or anything that needed to be made.
>There wasn't much that needed to be mended or maintained on the homefront, maybe today was one well spent outside. Maybe Jane would like to see the countryside before in a couple months time, it was covered by heavy snowfall and rendered in an inhospitable fifty degrees below zero.
>Maybe today was the day to take her into town and get her started on something of a wardrobe, maybe one that didn't consist of a dress that would mark her a walking anachronism, some oversized shirts. It would definitely be useful to get her in some more... period appropriate clothing, if only some warming layers to wear outside when the temperate fall collapsed into the bitter winter.
>Definitely some good boots. A woman with cold feet could be expected to have a bad time. Especially in actual frostbite inducing temperatures. first the fear reaction, then the amputating a foot, and then the-
>the sound of a phone ringing, and the shadow of a woman jumping, caught Eric's attention. 
>Eric walked into the kitchen, smirking at the sight of a woman looking about ready to pull out a crucifix as he walked to the phone,
"Relax, relax, it's just the telephone." Eric said, making a "down" gesture with his hand as he picked up the receiver with the other.
"Hello?"
>"Hey there. Whisper through the grapvine says you have some... computer related technology." 
"Oh?"
>"A friend of a friend said you needed the help, so meet me at the derby track on december fifth. I know a guy who can deal with your technological issue."
>with that the line went dead and Eric placed the receiver back in its cradle.
>"Who was that?"
"Another mercenary. Dude got out of the game but on occasion he helps a fella out."
>"What did he want?"
"He wanted some tech I got on my last contract, hot stuff. Don't wanna have your finger prints on it if you value your life."
>"Aaaaand knowing you for all of about a month, your fingerprints are on it."
"Fingerprints, eyelashes, probably some bodily fluids. I bet Edmund Locard's jumping in his grave with jubilation."
>"Who?"
"Edmund Locard was a pioneer of forensic science, and even before your time he was known in France for his exchange principle, which states anyone interacting with anything leaves a trace on it and it leaves a trace on them. IE, something unique to this time, a person who built a bomb can be found to have residue from chemicals in the explosive on their hands."
>"...Bombs existed in my time."
"But did you have ways to detect them based on swiping a moist towelette across their hands?"
>"No."
"Now how about after breakfast we head into town and I get you some better clothes."
>"I'd prefer some cloth if you wouldn't mind."
"Maybe on the side, but winters here are cold. The kind of cold that reveals new fundamental properties of material sciences. For example, did you know that if you have a piece of metal and bring it inside into a livable temperature water starts to appear all over it and then it turns into ice?"
>"What kind of temperature causes that?"
"Fifty degrees below zero."
>"... what?"
"Okay, so in the fahrenheit system, thirty two degrees is the point at which water freezes into ice. Sixty-two degrees is the predicted high for today, and is reasonably warm, you may even go without a jacket. Eighty-eight degrees below that, however, is the temperature I speak of. You go out in one of those dresses you were wearing when I found you and you'll be dead in six minutes. I hear it's a bad way to go."
>The look on Jane's face was priceless, as though she couldn't conceive of such a degree of cold, and then all at once felt it in the deepest fiber of her being.
"So That's a yes on winter gear, I take it?"

November 5, 2025. 11:49 PM.
>Eric sat up in the night time, wearing a moderately thick jacket, a thirty-two degree heat fleece jacket, and his old helmet, with its battery pouch on the back, a strobe that functioned as an IFF and a signalling light to prevent friendly marksmen from aiming just below the rim of it, an NVG active and illuminating his eyes with a crisp green image of the lands around his home.
>Eric thought on when he'd last used these pieces of equipment, he found distant and bitter memories of the first time he'd fought alongside the people with whom he'd spent the next three years, The last time he saw a childhood friend, a pale, dark haired woman just so close to having been the love of his life, but just so far from it, the next day, when he met Monica, albeit at the point of her bayonet and his fist.
>He remembered the bitter occasions, when he left the woman at home for three months to run off to Canada, the day one of his closest friends died, then a few days on when he'd taken a round from his direct front, just a couple inches to the right and six below his left armpit. All those years back, these events seemed to reach across a lifetime to impress upon him. The last time he'd used this equipment for anything but a walk in the woods at night, he was living out his life among a group of people out in the sticks... well, a different set of sticks.
>Silence.
>He thought about what'd happened since. The things he'd done with himself since he left. Security work in eastern Europe, assassinations in central Africa, hired gun work all over, scouting. He'd had a pretty kickass five years. Hadn't been shot, seemed to be none the worse for wear.
>There was a noise.
>As he looked up, he saw a moderately out of focus woman holding a tray, he could tell from a vague idea of the shape of her face that she was startled, bringing a hand upward toward her upper chest before it slowly settled back down.
>"What is that?"
"Just some old stuff I used to use in a different time."
>"I thought you might be cold out here, Coffee?"
"Sure. Sit with me."
>"So, what does that thing do?"
"The helmet stops bullets."
>"You don't anticipate being shot at out here." Jane observed as she handed Eric the coffee.
"True." Eric said, lifting his head to take a sip of the hot coffee.
>"Aren't you cold out here? You're wearing a pretty thin coat."
"You'd be surprised, lets just say I fully expect that you're going to over bundle and pass out at least once in the coming winter. Or you're gonna freeze. Cold weather clothing has come a long way."
>"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
>"Good. I want you to be happy."
"That's very kind of you."
>"So tell me, Eric. Where were your thoughts?"
"Just the past. I suppose it wouldn't be too inappropriate to say I was thinking about when I was your age."
>"Would you tell me about it?"
"I think you're going to get cold."
>"The coffee's keeping me warm."
"Do you really want to hear this? They're gritty and... well let's say that you might look at me in a different manner."
>"I'm interested in the truth. I wouldn't want to know you if I believed you were mendacious to me."
"Well, go inside and get yourself a jacket, you'll need it while you're sitting out here."
>With that, Jane stood and passed the helmet back to Eric before heading back inside.
>After a few moments she returned with a full cup of coffee, and with a long sleeve fleece jacket with a turtleneck collar, similar to the one Eric was wearing.
>"It's so soft."
"I know."
>"So, what were you doing when you were my age?"
"How much time you got?"
>"I've got as long as you want to talk."
>Eric flipped up the old night vision goggle and rotated the knob over a click, snuffing the glow from the back of it, and sat the helmet down on the porch.
Eric took a sip of coffee and began. "I suppose it had to do with this trip I took away from home for a few years..."

"So anyway, there I was, out in the sticks for four months and shot three months in, coming home to my wife with a reddish brown stain in my shirt and at FIRST, she's teary eyed and running to me like we've been apart a lifetime, THEN she sees the blood stain and jumps out of her skin, and demands I get to the doctor. Good times. I lived happily ever after as an engineer dabbling in machinery, welding, all the standard things someone might have done in the forties when inventing things... for another year, then I come home to see my pregnant wife and my kid on the floor of my house gutted like animals and another month, a speedy trial, in which the murderers were let off, and a sixteen victim killing spree later I left the vandals with a heartfelt speech in which I expressed my desire to prevent the spread of weakness outward from my lashing out and warned them to root out weakness in themselves wherever possible. Five years later I've done what I always do so well, I found a part and played it, played it so well I can comfortably afford things like those machines downstairs I use to destress metals, machine parts, hell, I even have a six axis cnc mill, and I can afford these things comfortably, and keep doing the things I've always done."
>Jane's face was outwardly blank, and easily expressive of someone still comprehending and articulating the pieces that someone else was putting together.
"Eleven years. Hard to think it's been eleven years since then. Five since I left the vandals, a lot of mercenary work, and these years of high risk work bring me to meeting you. Well, I can't really say that it was anything large. I was told to go to Japan and steal an AI core from a company in Nagoya. I stole it, I felt that the escalation of force was too slow, and then I had a knife fight with a small girl with a bowl cut and the ship I was supposed to come home aboard sank. I decided to visit a friend who I'd heard left the vandals as well."
>"Aaaand what did you say the vandals believed again?"
"That the way to deal withother people who antagonized them was essentially to disregard and batter them, essentially. I'll never forget when we were evacuating those canadians and they told us 'Don't worry about the rangers, they let chugs serve now, and they can't shoot for shit.'"
>"Have you ever considered remarrying?"
"Yeah. Hard to get along with most people when they have to know you well enough to know that I kill people for money."
>"Doesn't this country have a military?"
"Yeah, but they can call it 'serving the country.' I can call it extrajudicial killing, or mercenary work, security contracting is pretty good, but as much as I've been standing around engineering guns, I don't get out often. Many would be surprised that I haven't tried to reenact syrup snake."
>"So What happened?"
"I did what I do best when I'm given the chance. Find a part to play and play it. I've done this so well that, thanks to the listlessness of my private life and the PMC act of twenty eighteen, I've got between eighteen and twenty million stashed away in an un-taxed bank account. They aren't averse to paying mercs a high salary for my particular specialty."
>"Sounds like you can live comfortably for a long time. But you don't seem the type to do nothing all day forever."
"Astute. Guess next time I change my name I'll start a gun company and give that a whirl."
>"How long?"
"I don't know. Maybe... two, three months. I expect the snow won't clear before it happens." Eric answered, taking another sip of coffee.
>"I'm going to bed. Are you coming?" Jane said in a voice flavored by just a hint of intent before taking the last sip of her coffee.
"I'll stay up a while. Thanks for the coffee."
>Jane stood up, and turned her back to Eric as she made her way back inside, pausing in the doorway and looking back to him with a stern but caring expression.
>"Mister Rall, you're either a very dense man or one of great restraint." she remarked before turning and proceeding inside, closing the door behind her.
>Eric Picked up his helmet and resumed his viewing of the soon to be snowed over world through his old goggles before he muttered out to himself more than anyone.
"Before too long I intend to show you which."

Chapter 5: Away
1-23-19 0721 hours
"Let me tell you some shit that always pissed me off, the 'muh individualism' argument. Back before people to the right of fucking CHE stopped talking about it or went somewhere they could talk about it without literal terrorists descending on them, They used to talk about 'muh individualism! Being part of ANY sort of group is bayaaaad!'"
>"Eric, anyone ever tell you you're a fucking freak? Why can't you bitch about the cold?"
"Because unlike autistic individualism, the cold is neither necessarily good or bad, but you're going to need a jacket, as opposed to atomized individualism and its worship, which is retarded."
>"Nigger, it's like fifty degrees below and people are SHOOTING at us!" Chris yelled.
>"Eh, They're mounties and they let the fucking chugs in now." Stone remarked. "Continue on, Eric."
"So anyway, these retards are the ones who've been representing EVERYONE on the right who wasn't a fucking neocohen-"*A PTEW sound came out near their ears and fell away into the distance on the back end of a thud.*
>Eric snapped and spun around, snapping his SR-25 over the rocks and his optic, with bright red reticle onto a white lump in the forest, lying on the ground among the snow with a few visible black accents alike to flecks on camouflaged cloth. With two squeezes of the trigger, he watched the snow just below and in front of the lump turn a dark pink as a mist popped from the points of impact and the lump moved just enough to be perceived, as though it had gone limp.
>Eric removed his eyes from the optic and found another, and repeated the process, swiveled over to one more, and squeezed off another shot before pocks began exploding all around him and he dropped back into his position unscathed.
"So naturally they're all 'Being a member of a group is baaaad' and can't comprehend that any group is made up of individuals and of course 'Muh founding fathers,' but they apparently forgot that when they wanted to self determine, they didn't fucking lecture about individualism, they formed a fucking army. It's the best example of the false dichotomy everyone dealt in for so long. 'If I can't fuck a silverbacked cobra, I have no rights at all! If any group has taken an action that was detrimental to anyone ever, then all groups are bad! If a CAR has a wheel and a BICYCLE has a wheel, then clearly they're both motorcycles!' and on and on and on."
>"Or how about those anarchists that used to always talk about how oppressed they were because they couldn't just sit around and do coke all day, push out a few oven worthy wretches that couldn't breath on their own and expect the society as a whole to pay for their faggotry without anyone looking down on them." Stone remarked.
"We had those in California. They literally found a way to nuke the whole fucking state."
>"Yeah, how did THAT happen?" Chris inquired, for once, a grin coming through his mask.
"You know, not a whole lot is certain about the late stages, a lot of events may only have one source, but the rumor is they took over a naval base near LA or San Diego or something and SOMEHOW launched from a commandeered sub in port. It's all speculation, but it's about all we got to go on. Others say someone managed to smuggle the warheads and launchers into one of the foreign vassal areas from somewhere else abroad."
>"Man, just think how messed up the very late history of the California thing might be. For a lot of that shit I was reading about it and there's like you said, only the one source. Just think, someone could alter history just telling a shit hot story and we'd never know."
"I know. Striking, right?"
>"Just so we're on the same page..." stone began "...Lets say a nuclear explosion is occurring off in the distance, and you have just enough time to do one last act before the blast reaches you. What do you do?"
"Clutch the nearest chainlink fence facing toward the explosion with an unobstructed view of the blast wave's fiery wave of relief washing over the city."
>"Good man." Stone replied, before standing over the trench and firing a few rounds into the treeline about two hundred yards distant.
>Eric stuck his head up and searched for a bulge in the snow, a blob advancing through the treeline, anything to indicate the presence of a body in the snow, poised to fire on him, unburdened by stinging and horrendous bodily injury, void of ballistic trauma.
>He saw nothing.
"HEY! Who's got thermals? I need a scan of the woodline!"
>"I got you, son! HEY, FABRE! RALL NEEDS A THERMAL SCAN ON THAT WOODLINE!" a voice called, distinct enough to know it was that of a vandal, but not distinct enough to tell exactly who among the clatter of shots coming both ways filtering through his headset.
>Eric pulled his binoculars out and stuck only the barest amount of his body above the boulders to scan the woods.
>He looked on and found himself looking at a lump in the ground and in seconds was hearing indistinct murmurs that had originated with someone yelling while he dialed up the optic swiftly by the cat tail and fired, seeing the object react, and then fall limp.
>"It LOOKS LIKE YOU GOT THE LAST ONE OVER THAT WAY!" the previous voice carried into Eric's ears"
>Eric considered giving a call for confirmation, but decided to rest his voice as he saw a figure jumping from behind the rocks and calling on the vandals and plaidshirts to move on and surmount the hills.
>Eric soon found himself out of the rocks and moving along with the plaid shirts to the south.
>As Eric walked along side Chris and Stone, he soon found the man who'd called them to movement closing with him. Soon he came to recognize him as Roger Vandal.
>Eventually Roger made his way to Eric.
>"Rall, how you doing on food and ammo?"
"Doin' good. I got two more full loads in my pack, still got plenty of mags. Only complaint I can level is that we've been out here for three months."
>"Good shit. I was watching you shoot at the patrol in the wood line. Good shit, if you can keep it up, I think we can all get back south."
"Sounds good, man."
>"How're your plaids doing?"
"Stone's doing fine. Maple's doing fine, if a little quiet. Moose was insistent on Carrying extra ammo for us, he's somewhere out in the back."
>"Yeah, everyone's just kind of scattered around, I figure we'll get them back in order over the next hour. Hey, Chris, where're YOUR plaids?"
>"They scattered over near Roland. Haven't seen'em since. Any casualties?" Chris replied.
>"Haven't learned of anyone missing yet, just scattered around the group. No significant injuries either."
"Good shit. Better go check and see if the rest of them are still here."
>"Alright, later gents." Roger answered before falling further to the rear to check on more rearward groups.
>"You know, Eric, it's probably not going to kill anyone who wasn't already going to die if he takes a few more seconds to get back if someone's unconscious." Stone observed.
"Look here, leaf. We're not stopping if someone's missing because they're wounded. We're going to get a volunteer to go back. Every second we wait to figure out if someone's missing is another few feet they have to run on the way back to the rocks, and even WORSE, it's another few feet that, should they actually find that person ALIVE, that they have to carry or assist that person in getting back to the group, which means they're going to have to move faster than us, not only carrying their gear, but that person and their gear."
>"Well shit, when you put it that way, it's entirely justified."
"Who's autistic now, leaf?"
>"Still you, but you're not wrong."
"Look, every vandal out here save for like three of them all have families to get home to. They have women to come home to, who're tending to the farms, or something, they have sons who either ARE or will grow to be the whittling boy in Winslow Homer's painting for a time. Even the ones who are out here to prove they can fight, for whom this is their first outing, their first taste of blood, WILL be family men before they're allowed out on their second if they've performed well. I would keep that in mind when tallying lives. Each one lost will most certainly be felt by many."

1456 hours
>After a long day of marching and a swift change in the weather, the vandals had decided that the only safe, or really, non reckless option was to take a rest, get the men calories, some of them, sleep.
>Rall sat in a foxhole dug into the snow, not really cover... well not cover in the slightest sense of the word, but it was pretty good concealment.
>While he went at an MRE as though he hadn't eaten all day, Stone looked over the edge of the foxhole.
>"I don't see anything."
"Revel in it. Never know, they might mobilize the... what did you call it? With the Tikka rifles made specifically for them?"
>"The Canadian Rangers?"
"Yeah, the Chug Rangers. I suppose if we found them we might capture some-"
>"C-19's?"
"Whiskey. Could be a good fuel for a fire. Problem is that we're already so well wrapped that we would probably overheat... and we'd be far more visible."
>"I guess we could drink it if we had it."
"Eh, I can take it or leave it. We've been out here for three fucking months and I wouldn't mind actually cooking something, but on the other hand, I'd rather not get shot at in a fox hole made of snow. Trust me, it's not gonna protect us."
>"So what should we do?"
"keep your head down."

12-2-25 0550 hours
>"You're leaving AGAIN?"
"Yes. But this time I'll only be gone about a week." Eric answered to the woman, who seemed to be irate at the thought of him leaving.
>"And during this week I'm supposed to be doing... what?"
"Look, I know, it's boring, I felt the same way about eighteen years or so back. I get it. But I have to deal with THIS" Eric said, pointing to the cylinder in his hand. "THIS shit isn't going away on its own, and the longer it stays the more probability it not only endangers ME, but endangers YOU."
>Jane let out a sigh of resignation and stared at Eric. She knew she could get to him with the pout on her face, and she was right, but she could only get to him so well.
"Jane. When I get back, we'll have a little chat. But until then, I have to deal with this shit before it does some bullshit like send out a low battery distress signal."
>"Oh, okay... You know best. But when you get back-"
"I know, I know. We'll talk about it when we get back. Look at it this way, we'll be snowed in pretty quick and I won't be able to escape to anywhere."
>"Alright, but you WILL be back."
"You know I'll be back." Eric answered as he tossed the cylinder into his truck, whose engine was warming up and ready to go.
>With that, Eric found himself back on the road, destined to be at the track in just a matter of days.

Meanwhile In Kentucky.
"So. Think he trusts me?" A man looking out a window asks half to himself.
>"I don't know. He gives an impression. Not a clear one, but I think he plays close to the chest." The woman replied.
"Smart. I'd expect nothing less from him." The man remarked, becoming distracted by a feeling against his back.
>"Don't worry, I'll be covering you, dorogoy. Don't you trust me?~" The woman asked, pressing herself against his back.
"I don't know, you're starting to sound like you want something out of me." The man replied sarcastically as he swiveled his chair around, grabbing the woman by the shoulders and pulling her onto his lap.
>"It seems YOU are the one who wants something..."

12-5-25
>Eric waited by the track, thinking back, he'd remembered many occasions when, as a child he'd listened to his father tell stories of decades past, when this track was home to a race called the Kentucky derby, in which several horses like Omaha and Secretariat won an award called the triple crown.
>As Eric recalled the times when he would listen and be regaled by the stories of sports events that seemed so out of focus and far away as to have happened in a fictional world beyond belief, he couldn't help but feel he was being watched.

>"Psst." A voice called out from a shadow in some direction.
"'Bout time."
>"Didn't want to bring you out here for five minutes, I know it's a three day drive and you got hunting to be doing out in ungodly temps... But I can't really bring you out and take you to the derby."
"What can I say? I got a taste at some point and I just couldn't get enough."
>"I'd love to keep you around for a couple days, but... I figure you got some cargo I gotta deal with as a priority."
"Then which shadow are you in?"
>"Right behind you."
>Eric turned around to see a man who he'd heard of, allegedly he'd quit not such a long time before Eric hired onto a border penetration team.
>"You're not such a terrifying guy, John."
"You know my name. You don't need to hide it."
>"True, but I figured right about now, you'd have some new identity made up, like last time. I can't say I'm not an admirer of your work. But maybe you should talk less if you want to give off a more intimidating vibe."
"Yeah. I know what you're talking about. The black guy all crack addicts learn to fear."
>"YUP."
"Well then, mister Berdan. What are we waiting for? The next derby?"
>"What's the rush?" Mike asked.
"I don't know. I Don't see a pursuit to be followed, and in three days I gotta be back, as YOU said, renaming myself."
>"So you intend to get out and disappear. What are you going to do?"
"You still buy guns? Maybe in a year or so from now you'll see me on a billboard with a new name... I'm thinking this time I'll just alter my last name."
>"So I guess you're going to go far. I don't know how you do it."
"Do what?"
>"Change your identity, roll off like you don't care and effortlessly slip into a new mask... wait... Did I work for YOU when I was at vulture-hawk?"
"No. But I get the joke. Don't worry, I'm far less vituperative. Maybe you could come work for me. You strike me as just the type."
>"No, if I joined up at a gun company Ekatarina might get jealous. Wouldn't want to come in one day to the wife blowing up machines."
"Ekatarina? Odd name. Russian? And why would she be jealous?" Eric inquired
>"Yeah. Russian. She's possessive."
"Well, I'm sure you've got a wife to get back to, I've got document forging to get done. Here's the core." Eric handed off the AI core to Mike and turned on his heel to leave.
>For a second, Eric simply stopped, and froze in place.
>Eric turned around and looked to Mike for a last time, as though he just couldn't walk away without that last sentence.
"Hey! If you change your mind, give me a call."
>"I won't." Mike replied
"Offer's always valid!" Eric reminded before taking his last turn away.
>As Eric mounted his truck and began his drive back, he couldn't help but think of how he could even attempt to conquer the new and daunting tasks that lay before him. How would he deal with winter? How would he hunt? How would he pick a gun for that? What name would he make up? How the fuck was he about to make up TWO? How would he go back to regular goggles for night after five years of low mass afocals? He supposed it would be more a challenge to get the four drunken vandals than to gin up any of the other aspects of the tasks ahead.
"I really wish I hadn't left those goggles with Anon."

>As Eric drove down the road, looking for a place to pull off and rest, he turned on the radio and searched the band. Eventually he caught a riff of piano... a very seventies sounding riff.
"I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand. Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain..."

1-25-19 1134 hours
"So anyone want to know when the term 'shit' becomes applicable to our situation?"
>"Go on, tell us when?"
"The moment Chris over there fires off that fucking stinger, we're in a fucking WORLD of shit."
>"So,is that a good idea?"
"Well, it's that or risk getting hit. Those F-18's are a heavy risk right now."
>"Any information on what make and model?" Roger inquired.
>Stone chimed in. "They're CF-18's. The Canadian government bought a hundred and thirty eight F/A-18's, of which, ninety eight were A models and Forty were B models. They lack certain features present in C and D counterparts, namely, if I recall correctly, wiring for smart munitions and... actually, I'm not really sure that the A and B have all weather capability. Technically, they shouldn't be flying right now."
"Yeah... Haven't they lost like half of them?"
>"Yeah. Crashed twenty, retired forty. so there's just less than eighty, but think of it this way. Just one less than seventy eight in about ten seconds."
>Seconds ticked by before a sharp hiss puerced the ears of all around and a bright yellowish white flare blazed through the sky.
"He's not even evading." Eric remarked, watching the straight flightpath of the F/A-18 as it continued through the sky, itself becoming a flare as the missile struck.
>A trail of fire fell from gray sky at a pace that seemed just far to fast to be the uncontrolled tumble the aircraft had entered as it fell from the sky. There seemed to be no plume, no flash, no puffs of yellow that would signify an ejection or even a canopy jettison.
>The fireball simply fell, loudly, to earth.
>"Hey, Rall, how many of those do we have left?"
"Ten?"
>"Jesus, any anti armor?"
"We got like five javelins."
>"We gonna be on the montreal post?"
>"Probably."
"Guess the chow break is over. Everyone's getting up. Grab your shit, this is gonna be fucking intense."
>"Hey! Eric! pucker factor?"
"Shit, Anon... seven."
>As Eric rose out of his hole in the snow and began walking, he couldn't help feeling a little like he'd jumped out of a plane, and was caught in the middle of a fall.
>Eventually, with the hours the vandals and plaidshirts found themselves miles to the south and well isolated from most things, in the middle of a plataeu atop a small mesa.
>They had many miles and many weks to go before they would find themselves across the US border, and worse yet they could have many fights before they finally got away.
>"CONTACT RIGHT! 4,000 YARDS!" Anon yelled out.
"Type?"
>"HARD TO SAY! LOOKS LIKE APCS. OH FUCK THEY'RE-" Anon was cut off by the sound of impacting twenty five millimeter HE shells nearby.
"CHRIS! I WANT SHEF AND THE DOCTOR ON THOSE JAVELINS! THREE STRIKERS, BEARING ZERO SEVEN FIVE!" Eric yelled out
>"ON IT!" Came the reply
>Eric got low to the ground and thought about NOT the probability of a tracer, many of which appeared to be coming right at him from the front side of the autocannon.
>All Eric could feel was the repeated pounding of concussive blasts  and then...
>Eric found himself in a dimension unlike anything he'd experienced... without a headache.
>Echoes and droning sounds were all he could really decide was in his presence, somewhere off he could hear... what?
>"Time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin', into the future. I wanna fly like an eagle... to the seaaaaaa."
>In these spaces of color, this rainbow, these halls and erratically formed corridors like something a tiedye enthusiast would design, infinitely rounded and curvy, no corners allowed to form, he could only gather a vague sense of "down" that varied from forty degrees inclination against his left side to sixty degrees on his front.
>Eric entered a chamber, coated from the bottom to the top in yellows blending to greens reds and blues, echoing to his utter chagrin as the voice singing out changed its tune. "Abra ABRA CADABRA, I wanna reach out and grab ya. Abra Abra cadabra. Abracadabra..."
"Grrruuughgghghghghgghghghfhfh This fucking room sucks!"
>From somewhere came an agonizing bass not, striking out painfully in the antagonizing patter of about five beats per second, stopping and the  restarting after a couple seconds.
>For several seconds Eric's head felt like he'd been stabbed and the knife was twisting inside his brain.
>Eric retreated from the room before he soon realized that he no longer heard the bass impulse that'd pounded his head like a hammer. He even thought for a second that the faint voice singing out in the distance had faded... then it got louder, and less articulate.
>"vig ol et airrina, on' arryy meh u var eweh. ig ol eh arrina uz is ere i ave ooh say...."
"Is this guy wasted?"
>"Who's singing Steve Miller?!" a voice echoed like a brick against his skull.
>"We got Rall! He's unconscious!" a voice came in more clearly.
>"Don't just stand there, dig him out!"
>"We got three dead here!"
>"Chris didn't make it! He's been fragged!"
>Voices called out as Eric came back to reality, he could comprehend them, though they were hazy against the gray that was snow being scooped off Eric, who'd been partially buried in it.
>Soon the light reached his eyes as handfuls of snow were pulled from his face and finally, his body was yanked limply from the powder.
>Eric scanned frantically around him as he was sat up and examined.
>Stone, looked on as Axe, a founding member of the plaid shirts, held him upright and inspected his response to a flashlight, eventually satisfied that Eric would come to the full awareness of his situation after not too long.

1-26-19 1856 hours
>"Chris was a good man. It's hard to think he's gone."
"Believe me, no one's more torn up about it than me, and maybe his wife when I break the news to her, he was the one who brought me the knife and bed sheet when the lady and I had our big night, he was the one who helped push us together when I was doing oddjobs on the farm back at the enclave, he was my regular drinkin' buddy and my spotter when we'd do long range shooting. It's easy to be sad about his passing, but can we PLEASE have his funeral later? Maybe when we get to the end of the road, because right now we need to concentrate on getting home before we start mourning and feeling sorry for ourselves."
>"What's you're issue?"
"I'm on the slippery cope."
>"I see ya. So how long away is that?"
"Month, Give or take."
>"So what's the best party?"
"Vandal party. You're there to get drunk. And loud. Period."
>"So what's the worst party?" Stone asked.
"Fyre Festival."
>"Fuck's that?"
"So, Back a couple years it took place. It was planned by this one retard who dropped out of college and started a credit card company called magnises. Exclusive shit, only celebrities get to use it from what I understand. So he and this rappist, I don't remember his name-"
>"You mean rapist?"
"No. Rappist. Anyway, so he and this rappist stop on this island called great exuma, and together, the two come up with a rich kids woodstock in the tropics. They promised girls, campfires, villas, a HUGE number of music acts, like as many as there are in one of those metal fests where anthrax would show up and so would like twenty other acts for a song or two and then handing over the stage. So take a toss at how much this was all to cost."
>"Twenty million."
"Fifty million. Literally fifty million, and would take another year of organization. So NATURALLY, seeing as they got in touch with about four hundred 'influencers.' Basically e-celebs. So they get however many instagram celebrities to advertise this, Villas, beaches, concerts, two weeks on a 'private island' similar to the Bahamas. 'fyre cay' they tried to market it as. Norman's cay, colloquially known by the company as 'fyre cay?' No. Great Exuma. Population seven thousand, basically the parking lot of a sandals resort."
>"Jesus, it's already looking like a shitshow."
"So naturally, since he's managed to take a FUCKLOAD of short term loans, they can't postpone it, so they have to cut back the expenses. Villas? FEMA tents. Catering? Makeshift fastfood, we're talking like shit a wealthier drug dealer from say... compton might turn down. There's video out there of the arrival to the site, and it looks like they went to a refugee camp in fucking Haiti. Hilarious. Turn this bus Riiiiight aROUND."
>Stone, laughing wildly at this point, couldn't catch his breath to reply.
"So, most of the flights were cancelled, the five hundred or so people who DO manage to show up, find no food, no one knows whose tent is whose, the beach is shark infested, and then to top it off, when the Bahama government steps in and says 'go home, tards.' They try to give the customers an option. Refund... or vip tickets to NEXT year's fyre fest. The guy goes to jail for wire fraud and there's never another. Instagram celebs get harassed for a week for shilling, funny shit."
>Between cackling, stone managed to get out "Did any of the concerts go through?"
"NO! They all cancelled!" Eric managed to get out as he himself gave in to the urge to laugh at the shitshow "The only guy who had fun there was the one who took his drugs on the plane."
>For a good while the two laughed their troubles away.
"Oh, man. What a shitshow. And that is in my opinion, the worst party ever thrown."
>"I'm getting one of those things.. a headache with pictures...an Idea. When we get back, lets throw a party and start a forest fire."
"Wait, wait, Stone, you WEREN'T already gonna-*gasp*" Eric got out before he noticed a red bolt flash over him.
>An echoing clatter was heard in the distance just before it was drowned out by the sounds of men shuffling in holes, posturing and readying their rifles, racking rounds into chambers, gear clattering against plates and vests, puffing sounds as bullets clattered into snow.
>Sounds present but unheard like the activation of thermal devices and switching on of magnified night vision optics seeking out signatures of infantry men and armored vehicles, attempting to locate targets to call out for marksmen and guided launchers, scanning both horizon and sky for targets at which to fire rifles machine guns and missiles.
>Stone turned and began to stick his head up, shouldering a SCAR H and preparing to fire it in the general area of the origin of the shots when Eric lunged forward, grabbing the drag handle on his plate carrier and yanking him back on his ass.
"Stay the fuck down. They're too far out for us to really see them. We need better optics. Hold out your hands." Eric said as he reached into his backpack for his two clip-on night optics.
>Eric unzipped his pack and pulled out two tubular soft cases, one containing a FLIR UNS and the other containing a Trijicon SNIPE-IR thermal clip on, as he unzipped the case of the latter device, he made an offer to Stone.
"Night vision or thermal?"
>"Thermal's easy mode, right?"
"Yup." Eric answered as he pulled out the clip on and handed it to Stone. "put it in front of the scope and start scanning the horizon." Eric stated as he began attaching the UNS to his rifle, clicked the rotary switch over one position and peered over his hole in the snow, supporting the SR-25's weight on the snow as he began scanning the horizon for targets.
>Eric heard the first return shots and watched as light sports on the even lighter snow began to take shape.
>In Eric's eye, the specs firing at them were difficult to discern, but he could make them out among their flashes, and began the process of estimating a rough range, setting his reticle for a decent brightness, and beginning to bracket the specs of dark greenish grey with shots, making a rough wind hold and simply saturating spaces with hot lead until he saw reactions.
"Wish I had tracers right now. I think I've got a couple, how many you got?"
>"I've got three."
"I think these guys are actually trained, do their shots seem to be more concentrated to you?"
>"Yeah, no doubt about it, I think we're dealing with professionals here."
>Eric reloaded and found another target to throw seven rounds at.
"Seems like they're about five hundred yards out."
>"Yeah, seems like they've got use pretty zeroed. I've got some huge hotspots on the thermals."
"Yeah, we might be hearing Javelins in a moment."
>Eric noted for a moment a small flash in the fighting hole, as though his rifle had just been fired into the hole, though neither his nor Stone's rifle had been down below the horizon when it occurred
>Suddenly Eric knew what'd happened even as it just started, and he'd only just now began to register the first sensory signs of it.
>A sensation, not yet a sharp and agonizing pain but rather a hot wet feeling as though scalding hot water was pouring onto his left side. An impulse ran up his body, tensing his muscles, which, while tensed to support his body weight and maintain balance, increased tension in his leg uncontrollably, causing him to shamble over to his left.
>"Eric? You hit?"
"Yeah. I need a medic." Eric said as he struggled to maintain his composure and restrain himself from screaming a blue streak of profanities and racial epithets.
>In Eric's mind, the thought of standing back up and continuing to fire had occurred, and he decided that, he was hit in the body, he was bleeding, and every second the fight was prolonged by him NOT shooting targets, his probability of surviving the night diminished.
>Eric Struggled to his feet, and locked his legs out, resting himself in a forward lean on the edge of the fighting hole, brought the rifle to bare again and start to search out the gray blobs, congealing, as though moving to drag injured friends to safety, and began firing again.
>As Eric began making the effort to pelt the targets as quickly as he could accurately do so, he noted the hiss of a launch, the bright flash washing out the screen of the clip-on.
>Then another.
>He heard the sounds of sets of chopper blades.
>Faintly off in the distance, if he listened closely through his muffs, he could discern a buzzer.
>More hissing among the clatter of gunshots directed in a direction or two.
>Distance explosions, booming through the air.
"Ugh. Stone, are they running?"
>"Yeah, looks like they're pulling back a bit. Can you walk?" Stone asked.
"Yeah. I think so, but I need a medic first." Eric Answered to the Canadian, looking on at his back, wet and stained with blood as he made a labored effort to push himself off the front wall of the fighting hole, leaving a pinkish red smudge that'd dripped down a foot from the five inch stain, and lowered himself to the side of the hole.
>"HEY! MEDIC! RALL'S SHOT! IT'S BAD! I DON'T THINK WE CAN MOVE HIM!" Stone called out as he jumped from the fighting hole and ran toward the rear positions.
>Eric could make out murmurs but no solid speech between his deteriorating state of awareness and his accelerated heart rate, instead focusing only on taking slow, deep breaths, and attempting to lower his heart rate so if he did have to go to the other side with his friend, he'd at least be forced to do so a few moments later.
"I want Monica." Eric quietly muttered to the night air.
>Stone and the medic jumped into the trench, where Stone reported that Eric had been shot through the side, just outside the coverage of the plate, and that the bullet had exited the same spot on his back.
>The medic called out.
>"I NEED AN OCCLUSIVE DRESSING!"

1-28-19
>In a mere thirty three hours, Eric had managed to assume most of his own weight again, thanks in part to the later observed lack of a sucking chest would of any kind, and the nature of his injury being mostly bruising, a couple broken ribs and damage to easily clotted superficial blood vessels.
>Thanks to the modern miracles of small doses of painkillers, the sharp stonging pain of having been shot just less than two days prior was reduced to a dull thumping ache.
>Eric found that if he ignored the ache in his side, he could simply take joy in a conversation about a children's movie while he marched, which evoked, among the participants, such humorous responses as "The radio! Cries out in pain as he strikes you!"
>In another month, the job as completed as it was, Eric figured that they'd all be able to go home with the next resupply party. The distraction had been provided and probably more than outlived its utility insofar as it allowed the plaidshirts to send their female members and some of their leading members straight south with another group of vandals. There could be no crackdown on the plaidshirts this year. Maybe next.
>Maybe they'd gotten back last month. Maybe he'd be back next month.
>Though it would be a hard month with the ache in his side.
>He had an unknown feeling in the back of his head. Somehow he felt that all he had to do for that time would be to keep the pace.
>He would get back.

12-8-25 1435 hours.
>Eric finally reached the end of the road with snow falling down, in about a month's time, he knew all too well that he'd be digging his way out of his house to hunt animals in the field. Riding into it on a quad and refusing to adjust his scope rather than send in thousands of dollars in optics to be repaired or replaced. Many of the optics, after all, were made by companies that had since he purchased his optics, lost their sterling reputation, putting out shitty imprecise optic after shitty imprecise optic.
>Eric dropped out of his truck and walked to his door before stopping and looking back out. There was a break in the weather, one he could tell would last. For now, he didn't need much protection from the temperature, and while he expected that Jane wouldn't be too eager to run into the strange world without him, he did expect that she might go out for a walk at some point. As long as she could navigate the land, Eric wouldn't worry too much of Jane going out on her own to explore.
>But there was one danger he was acutely aware of.
>Eric opens the door and is greated by a few seconds of silence.
>And then the sound of pattering feet running against a hard floor.
>Eric moved to a junction in the hallway and looked on toward the main room and the kitchen.
>The pattering grew closer.
>Rapidly.
>Quieter
>Only in time to turn partially did he realize that he was standing near an open doorway to a carpeted room, which matched the change in the sound.
>Suddenly he saw a flash and felt two tendrils squeezing around him and about a hundred and a dozen or two pounds slamming into him.
>Eric was aware of only the giggling mass that slammed him into a wall and was squeezed around him, nearly dragging him off his feet, and the sensation having just been slammed into a wall.
>"Hehehehehehehehehe Willkommen zuhause." She said, evidently so excited she forgot to speak English.
>Eric smiled and put his arms around Jane and smiled.
"Happy to see me?"
>"Yes! I missed you."
"Why don't I get unpacked and then I can take you out somewhere? I want to show you something out there."

>"Okay." Jane answered, cheerfully receiving a kiss on the forehead.
>Eric pulled himself from her arms and unpacked. He picked out a jacket just a little too thick to wear during heavier activity in the current temperature. But one for him, one for Jane, and he could get on one of the bikes and ride out on the trails that he couldn't access with his truck.
>In minutes Eric found himself ready to ride, and putting some of his spare equipment onto Jane before mounting her onto the back of his Kawasaki Versys  300.
"Jane, just hold on to me, we'll be there in thirty minutes." He told her as he closed the garage door and the engine made its high pitched cough and cycled to life.
>As Eric had predicted, not much more than thirty minutes of riding ensued before he came to the stop as close as he could get to the spot he was looking for. The trail ahead was no longer navigable, but he didn't need to navigate it. There was only about a few yards to go.
>Eric turned the key, pulled it out and dismounted the bike, kicked out the stand and pulled Jane off of it.
"Follow me." Eric commanded.
>"What's out here?"
"Something I want to show you."
>Eric lead Jane up a steep and winding game trail, occasionally turning around to lend her a hand in climbing the occasional slippery feature in the ground.
>Only twenty yards from the vista he was looking for, he felt something, an absence.
>He turned and saw that Jane had shrunk back and stopped moving about five yards behind him.
"What's wrong?"
>"Something about this feels dangerous."
"That's why I wanted to show you this." Eric said as he walked back, put his arm around her and took her into his shoulder, walking her to the spot.
>He noticed that she was quivering.
"Don't worry, I won't let it get you."
>"Why does this place feel so unsafe?" She asked as Eric got her to the spot.
"No one knows why, but it feels like we're not alone, right?"
>"It feels like we're being stalked by a murderer."
"Yeah, no one knows why, but a lot of random canyons in the US have been like this for a long time, and in the last few decades, Rock fields like this have been rather... odd. Besides how pretty they are, there's a reason I wanted you to see them."
>"Why is that?" She asked, apparently doing her best to suppress a rather flighty mood or maybe a mild panic.
"Just so you know what they look like. I don't expect you to stay inside the house and only go out with me. Just seems impractical. I want you to know what to look for if you decide to take a walk outside."
>"What happens in these places?"
"No one know's exactly why, but people walk in, they walk from one end of the simple rock field to another feeling odd, as though chased, or hunted. Well, they run into these fields. They might run out the way the came, might run out the other side, but either way, when the get out, they simply find themselves miles away, sometimes even as many as dozens or HUNDREDS, sometimes they find that they've even come out near a public road days or weeks later."
>"What?"
"Oh yeah. These places aren't something I want you to ever walk into, if you see one, give it a wide berth. If you DO get some crazy impulse to walk into one, come get me and I'll go with you. There are literally tens of thousands of incidents a year with these rock fields around the country."
>"Noted, now can we please get out of here?"
"Sure. Let's go." Eric replied, happy to oblige the woman's desire to be free of the rock field and its strange presence of hostility.
>As Eric walked Jane back down the trail, he couldn't help but think something was odd about this occurrence.
>Why did Jane notice it so much earlier than he did?
>Oh well. Spoopy shit happened all the time out in the sticks. And one person might be slower to pick it up than someone else, even if the slower party knew what to look for.
>In another hour Eric would be back at home and probably putting the bike away until May or June.
>In the meanwhile, he had more pressing matters than even his next trip out anywhere or fabricating a new alias for himself.

12-12-25 2236 hours
>Sometimes in the universe, one can be stricken with listlessness. Sometimes, with lethargy.
>Sometimes, one is stricken with comfort. On even rarer, and more enjoyable occasions, two.
>Eric was lying on a couch in his home, Jane was snuggled up to him and rested in his arms, The Conqueror, one of the comparatively few films that Eric could stomach watching, was playing on a large monitor.
>For the first time in at least a decade, Eric was watching a movie comfortably. Happily even.
>He sensed Jane's head moving, and looked down to find her eyes meeting with his.
>Fourteen seconds passed and not so much as a breath was taken between them. Eyes, had not moved. Finally Eric gave in and started to stand, scooping the woman up with him as he rose to his feet.
"FINE! Let's go for a roll in the hay." He answered to the gaze of the half naked woman as he settled her into his arms, carrying her toward the bedroom with one arm hooked around her thigh, and the other hand hooked around her shoulder and grabbing a handful of soft breast.

Meanwhile, Idaho.
>"So you think she's been through here?"
"I don't know. MAYBE. The thing is, I remember where I knew 'Stanton's' face from was here. He was one of these guys, supposedly. ALLEGEDLY, the one who went out and killed all those people. No one could really say anything about means or opportunity, but if there was ANYONE in the world who had a motive to slaughter THOSE three people, and thirteen others, AND behead several of them and dismember them and shove various members and heads into their organs and sew their bodies shut before leaving them in a van outside a courthouse, it was him."
>Michael walked toward the gates of the compound and the guards at the gate approached him, eyeing him and the blonde haired, green eyed woman with him up and down before giving their command.
>"State your business." a guard ordered.
"I'm investigating a mercenary. Something tells me someone here might know something about her, which may be conducive to solving my investigation."
>"You with the government?"
"No. Used to work with a PMC. USED TO."
>"You're free to ask around, just don't start anything. No one who does finishes."
"I'll take it under guidance." Mike answered as the guard opened the gate.
>"If you're looking for connections to someone, try Roscoe's. It's the houseboat themed bar a mile away. If no one knows there, try the sandpit." the guard called out as Mike walked into the wall with Ekatarina.
>A couple minutes passed before he spoke to Ekatarina.
"This place seems pretty dead. What's up here?"
>"You forget, these are... who are these guys?"
"Vandals."
>"So in the first place, they're probably strictly regimenting themselves to a lights out at nine schedule and at the same time, they're probably watching us. I don't know."
"I don't think they're THAT regimented. More like any other city. The ones who are up are, the ones who aren't, aren't."
>"Maybe they're waiting their turn for sentry duty."
"Eh, they don't strike me as the type to go that far. either way, I don't think we'll find out firsthand."

12-13-25 0012 hours.
>Mike and Ekatarina finally arrived at Roscoe's, finding the place to be shockingly upscale for a bar in the united states.
>The floors were clean.
>The place more resembled a study than a bar.
>Drinkers were strewn about the place, which hummed with conversations, like any other popular bar. However, there was no illusion that Mike and Ekatarina were blending in, the glances at something ridiculous, the remarks, which could only have been "Get a load of these two."
>Something about the situation was welcoming, and the two were undeterred from approaching patrons of the bar and asking questions, though getting no information on the question "ever heard of a 'Gray Wilson?'"
>"What's that?"
>"Sounds lame." and various other answers would be the only answers they'd get that night.
>After hours of inquiries and what turned into a good night of drinking, Mike and Ekatarina found themselves rested at sunrise in the front room of a house belonging to a friendly couple they'd met during the night out, whose names they could just barely remember as being Roger and Mary vandal.
>After breakfast, the two couples walked to the gate together and Mike and Ekatarina found themselves happily departing the gate and continuing on for miles down the road before something occured to Michael.
"What the fuck just happened?"
>"I... I feel like we just spent a night out with the neighbors, who let us crash at their place and gave us breakfast, then told us not to be strangers..."
"Dammit! We were supposed to find out if anyone knew of Gray! Not have a great night! Oh well, it was a great night. I give up."
>"I can see why that guy you met with would have been in there." Ekatarina remarked.
"I um... I don't think Gray was ever there."

0930 hours
>Eric rose from bed, slipped away from Jane's grasp and walked into the kitchen.
>As Eric began cracking eggs, his mind began to wander.
"Someone must be doing something out there. I wonder who's doing what..." Eric thought to himself.
>How many more times could he change his name and background, scenery and life? How many more years did he have in him?
>Maybe he could come back to the vandals. Though, maybe Jane would think it some kind of trance, as though she'd continued her life in thirty eight. Not that Eric could say with any certainty that he'd remember that his last five years weren't a dream.
>Maybe he'd wake up one morning and it'd be twenty twenty, maybe that ache he'd had from getting shot would be a nuisance as it had been all those years back.
>"Eh, gun company, Actual wealth, monetary wealth." Eric thought.
>Somewhere in the back of his mind, Eric would've liked to believe that it might happen any day now, but front and center he knew the last decade was no figment of the mind.
>Before too long, Eric had more or less turned his mind inward and created his own simulated world while he went through the mechanical motions of making breakfast.
>Eric noticed a Contented looking Jane walking into the kitchen in a gown, Yawning and sitting down, following him with a dreamy gaze.
"Sleep well?"
>"Better than you did, apparently."
"What appears to be wrong?"
>"You were walking in circles for three minutes."
"Happens."
>Eric Placed a plate and silverware in front of Jane and sat across the table from her.
>"What shall we do today?" Jane asked before starting.
"We could read, watch some movies, I have a few movies that aren't Hollywood cancer, some books in my collection range from nonfiction, to fantasy, tales of the dark and horrid future, some of them are just printed madness..."
>"Tell me about hunting?"
"Simply put, it's cold out here, we got the polar vortex coming, it's dangerous for most people."
>"Doesn't that mean it's dangerous for you too?"
"Yeah, but I'm stronger than the average person. I've been running through extreme environments for thirty seven years. since my twenties I've been going through the deserts, I spent time in my early thirties just below the arctic, bottom line I've spent a large amount of my life getting more than my fair share of weather over my head."
>"So how safe can you keep me if we go out?"
"Well, first, I have to strip you, dress you for the actual temperature outside, we have to find you a gun to use, THEN we have to dig our way out, and after that I'll keep an eye on you while we stalk and see how well you can handle tracking through the snow in these low low temperatures. Not gonna help with the polar vortex arriving this year."
>"So... easy or..."
"Easily as anything else this time of year in this region of the united states."
>"Okay..." Jane began as she finished her breakfast. "So you have to redress me..."

1024 hours
"Alright, keep close to me. Now, it's cold enough the animals will be moving near constantly, so it won't be too hard to stalk them, though in the first place the visibility is about... three or four hundred yards, so it's not likely that we're gonna have to stalk for more than the time it takes to see them."
>"It's LOUD OUT HERE!"
"ARE YOU WARM?"
>"YES!"
"ALRIGHT. LETS START. YELL IF YOU GET TIRED."
>And so Eric and Jane began their stalk through the blizzard.

Kentucky 1723 hours.
>"It's good to see you two!" the blonde haired woman declared, Giving a warm smile to the couple before her.
>"Thank you. It's nice to take some time away from Florida. It's nice to get out of Florida and spend some time with good friends." the woman of the two replied.
>A man stood beside her, between eye contact with the blonde haired woman, looking around and warding off the passing stares at the woman accompanying him, her fluffy white tail, white hair, red eyes and wolflike ears about as concealed as the absurdly prominent shading in his eye sockets.
"You'll have to forgive my manners, I've been on a pretty hectic work schedule the last couple weeks and If I didn't have Marina here to take care of me at home, I might have withered away by now."
>"There's nothing to forgive Jason, Michael and I know how you like to keep busy. Is it true you forgot to sleep?"
"What can I say? When the idea hits, you just gotta strike while the iron's hot."
>"We understand. Michael and I were in Idaho just this morning and he's basically a zombie right now, you should see his face, it's practically translucent." Ekatarina explained.
"Idaho? You didn't get on the no fly list, did you?"
>"Probably got on ALL the lists by now. Come, come. We've got to get you settled in." Ekatarina Ordered as she turned around and waved for the two to follow her.

1744 hours
>As Eric hiked along with Jane behind him, he found himself more and more impressed.
>Walking through the snow covered forest, He stopped, and turned to see Jane taking several meandering steps toward him.
"Wanna take a rest?"
>"Yes. I'm getting tired." She said as she reached him, throwing an arm over his shoulder and leaning on him.
>Eric reacted quickly and wrapped his arm around her waist and lowered her to a sitting position on the ground.
>Eric took the opportunity to give her a once over and check for signs of anything worse than fatigue.
"How do you feel?" Eric asked as he looked the woman over.
>"Tired."
"Any other notable sensations? Cold? Hot? Comfortably warm?"
>"I feel warm enough, but not toasty."
>Eric put her hand over his.
"Alright, honey, I need you to do me a favor, squeeze my hand as hard as you can." Eric commanded, receiving only a moderately firm squeeze in reply.
>"What's wrong with me?" Jane asked, a hint of worry only possibly being present among a voice saturated with lethargy induced by fatigue.
"Heh, you're just tired. We can sit here a few minutes and then go home."
>"Is that it?" Jane asked between some semi ragged breaths.
"I think you'll live." Eric began as he sat next to her and put an arm around her. "You've kept up all day, and done it well. I wouldn't be surprised if you could actually walk on your own again in a few minutes."
>"So... What do you want to do now?" Jane asked as her breaths slowed.
"I think I've put you through enough strain to know that you aren't ready for long range or multiple day hunts, but to be honest, I don't really go on those in the winter anyway."
>"So, is that why you brought me out here? To TEST ME?" Jane asked as her breaths spiked back above normal rates.
"No, I wanted to actually take you hunting. That was what I told you, was it not?"
>"Yes. That was what you told me."
"Very few people have ever managed to keep up with me out here. If I WAS judging you on that, I'd judge you worthy."
>"I'm Worthy?" Jane asked with a chuckle. "I've never heard of anyone saying it like that. When are you just gonna say you love me?"
"Well. How's now for a time?"
>"Oh?" Jane Perked up, becoming just excited enough to be able to actually turn her head.
"...No. Now's a poor time. those words have been rendered trite in this day and age. Give me some time and I'll find the words to express it with the flare it deserves. If you demand it now I can only say the naked truth."
>"I don't want flare. I want just that. Tell me how you feel."
"Alright. I'll give it to you. For five years I've been going into danger for money. It was its own reward, even if the people I worked for and their aims were personally repugnant. The money? Just a bonus. Not that it isn't a perk, but still just a cherry on top. Then I met you and something changed. I went out and for the first time in five years I couldn't look forward to the work, but getting back home. To you. It's been three months, and it's quick, I know, but I love you and I'd rather come home to you than go out and seek the thrill of a dangerous and lawless line of work while I wait for the day when tempting fate for entertainment finally catches up with me."
>Jane paused. Somehow she wasn't ready for Eric to simply show his hand. She contemplated for a minute, just what psychotic thing he'd just said.
"So what's your life story?" Eric asked with a smile.
>"I translated documents from English to German for a living, I went to visit my parents once a month in the country and rode horse through the trails... Then one day I got sick and when I went to bed, I woke up in a room next to people in strange mottled clothes, Anon and Emily... Then I walked into the hallway and that was the first time I encountered you and the other Anon, looking on at me indifferently, and then the first thing you said to me was the strangest request anyone's ever made of me. 'Say squirrels.'" At the last bit, Jane laughed at what she found to be the pure absurdity of the prospect.
"That WAS the cutest thing with the accent and all." Eric recalled.
>Jane was amused, but something struck her mind.
>"Hey. Eric... Where do we go from here? It seems obvious but-"
"Nonsense, it's simple. From here, we go home. It's six in the evening. It's dark and it's not wise to stay out this late. After that? Well THAT, is slightly complicated. But for now, Lets focus on the part where we get out of the cold."
>With that, Eric seemed to Jane, to float to his feet before pulling her up like a doll.
"Can you walk?"
>"I think so, lead the way."
>With that, Eric looked off into the dark forest and picked out the direction they'd been heading and continued, periodically checking to ensure that Jane hadn't collapsed.

January 18 2026 2312 hours
>"So what can we do?"
"Out here? In a field? IN IDAHO? Fuck if I know. It's a hard sell here, but we could always try and lure him out. Maybe he'll run for the vandal compound, it's only like five miles from here."
>"WAIT, it's THAT CLOSE?" Gray asked, even in the dark, Eric could tell the color was draining from her face.
"Are you afraid of the vandals?" Eric inquired with an incredulous tone, dumbfounded by Gray's apprehension.
>"You're damn right I'm afraid of the vandals! They're VIOLENT EXTREMISTS!" Gray exclaimed much to Eric's amusement.
"Okay, take it down a notch. You're not exactly one to talk, Angela Davis-Harris-Klebold junior." Eric chided to the young woman with the bowl cut. "If you want to run away because you're worried they'll use you for warbride futurism, you best run now, I can already smell the patchouli you're wearing."
>"Okay, okay, I get it, you were a vandal, give it a res-"
"Why, have you SOLD OUT? I'm downwind and I DON'T SMELL ARMPIT!"
>"Okay, cunt."
"Don't blame me for my collapse cult being cooler than yours, blame yourself for being lame."
>"Lame how?"
"Come along and I'll tell you alllll about it." Eric said as he started along toward the house in the field.
"Hey, while we've got a minute, you got the gear?"
>"Yeah, I know you said months ago that you had someone waiting at home, well if that pans out, consider this a wedding present. If not, consider it a ... 'severance package' from vulturehawk" Gray explained before Eric heard the rustling of a hard material being pulled from a stiff nylon pouch "Hold out your hand."
>Eric reached back and a small high impact plastic like object filled his hand.
>Eric brought his hand to his fore and looked at the object.
>It was a lowlight optic of some sort, but it wasn't his usual low mass afocal pocket goggle. It had two screens on one side, and the other held two screws which he expected were worm gears for IP adjustment, two lenses whose use was obvious, two buttons on the left, one very conspicuously marked "power" and the other expected to be an IR, then two more were on the other side, one of which was labeled ON/OFF and the other, to the rear, labeled CYCLE
"Gray? What are these."
>"Well remember when we'd always get those tubes labeled KZ13212? I went into HQ and no one knew what the fuck was up. I just raided R&D. They're like those goggles you always used, but dual sensor."
"So they have thermal?"
>"Yup. Powered by two double A batteries in the pack on the rear of the triple straps and takes standard remote battery cables like the old aviation goggles."
"God I missed these. Don't even need a helmet."
>"So, wait, how was my collapse cult lame?"
"Pretense of rebellion and powerlessness. You had ALL the institutional power and made splinter factions specifically to make the 'perfect' the enemy of the 'good' so you could delude yourselves into thinking you WEREN'T dominant in positions of power because your ideology is reliant on victimhood being considered the virtuous stance and all that is good, strong or successful being evil. It wasn't hard to fight the dozens of splinters that resulted in you guys embracing everything that's ugly or in some other order offensive out of some feeling of resentment for the superior society that raised you. To make yourselves EVEN WEAKER, you only tried to unite with all the contravening and disparate factions that only united on hating organizations like the vandals. Remove the vandals and what do your feminist eco-terrorist friends have in common with say... The communists? The anarchists? Nothing."
>"What the fuck?!" Gray stopped for a second, Eric, on the other hand, decided to put on the goggles she'd given him, and turned them on to be greeted with the cool blue glow of the goggle and a remarkably crisp image of the world around him.
"Come on, Gray! You can walk and have the pieces fall into place at the same time."
>With that, Eric noted a brief period of feet crunching over dirt and brush as they closed with him before he continued talking.
"Only a couple hundred yards to go."
>"WAIT. Is that REALLY what made the vandals remain while the sisters of the revolution withered?"
"Well here's the deal with vandals. We have a lot less in the way of identities. We essentially have man who fits, woman who fits, and we have a lot in the way of beliefs, interests and culture with any other group of our type. Hell, a lot of the folks here were absorbed when the plaid shirts made their exodus from Canada. Strip away hatred for our enemies and we could still be neighbors."
>"So... We can't commune with people who don't inherently have more than one thing in common with us?"
"Bingo."
>"Disparate... factions..."
"Alright. This is where Weaver should be staying. Word is he's been trying the Robert Redford strategy of buying up all the land around so he can play old time rancher." Eric said as he closed the last twenty yards to the door.
>"Flash through the window and rapid entry, ready?"
"On your word." Eric said as he took a lean into a position to avoid the door and readying his SMG for the breach.
>"Three...Two... ONE!" Gray through a flashbang through the window, piercing the quiet with a shattering of glass.
>FWPOOF
>Eric lunged into action, kicking the door off its hinges and rushing into the house, checking around corners and following what seemed a natural progression toward a bedroom.
>In seconds Eric found himself looking at a red outline of a human body, it was a man fumbling to figure out the most basic things of waking up. "Where am I? Which way is up? What's happening?"
>Eric descended on the man, punching him in the sternum with the muzzle of his SMG
"I GOT THE PACKAGE!" Eric yelled.
>A sound of boots clattering down a hallway came to exist, and then Gray materialized into the room.
"Alright, now what?"
>"I'm just gonna interrogate our colleague here and you can call it a day."
"Happy to help. Anything else you need?"
>"Yeah, pull security while I deal with Weaver."

January 19 2026 0230 hours
>Gray walked out the door to see a rather tired looking Eric dutifully outward for any interlopers who might be tracking the two or interfering in the affair.
"Get anything out of him?" Eric asked.
>"It was probably the CIA, but they seem to have given up on him and us pending a congressional investigation."
"WHAT?"
>"One of the negative effects of what's happened with the internet phasing out oldschool broadcasting is that word of shit like this doesn't get around as easy anymore... also they overturned Marbury v Madison for violating checks and balance last week."
"Well, the judiciary can't rule over the president now, but what's the CIA angle?"
>"Apparently they wanted to trigger an international incident that would have justified one of their contractor's contracts with a tech company attached to their government."
"I don't like this, I say we wash out hands of it... Wait, who was the contractor?"
>"Vulturehawk."
"Fuck. Did you kill him?"
>"I'm not that cold. He has a wife and kids coming out to see him in a couple hours... should I?"
"Naw. You gotta trust your gut. And yours said to let him live."
>"I mean, I'm not going to lose sleep over it, while this is still reversible..."
"No. If you didn't kill him then, you shouldn't now. He doesn't know who we are, does he?"
>"No."
"Then lets head out."

1430 hours
>Eric arrived home, opening the front door to find a stark hallway.
>He walked in and closed the door, advancing slowly down the hallway to find a note setting at the end of the hallway just past the door.
"Jane! I'm home!" he called out, seeming to receive no response.
"Jane?" Eric called.
>Maybe she'd gone out somewhere... though there were no tracks, which made for a worrying prospect.
>Eric picked up the note and saw that it seemed to read in a foreign language. Possibilities and questions rushed through Eric's head for analysis
>Maybe Jane wrote something down for herself? Maybe private? But then why would it have lipstick on it-
>Suddenly an arm touching Eric's shoulder and gently redirecting his gaze away from the paper brought him to realize the meaning of "Hinter dir."
>Eric was sitting in his bedroom, tending to the tasks of winterizing his equipment.
>The addition of a white helmet cover, the wrapping of his goggles in white paracord, the changing of his green balaclava with a white one, the hand finding its way to his shoulder.
>"Come on! Play vith me darling!" Jane moaned anorously as her hand began wondering to Eric's body.
>Eric's mind began reacting in segments, parts of which reacting to the woman straddling his lap, the hands wondering to his body.
>Jane felt soft, and even unusually warm for what Eric was learning to be her temperature when aroused.
>At this point in time, Eric couldn't remember what had even provoked him to this fervor. And the single part of his mind that wasn't consumed with working the woman on the bed from a blunt arousal that made her insistent and frisky to a frenzy doubted that she did either.
>Taking the woman to the bed and throwing her onto it, Eric began his advance into her embrace, the last functioning part of his mind thinking, to no effect, that while he couldn't see her heat, he may as well be looking at a presence which colored the air around it.
>Together with Jane's rapid breathing, the sound of blood rushing through Eric's ears and the half frantic, half rhythmic motions which couldn't have happened any faster, or slower than they did, all thoughts were drowned from mind.
>At a pace which could not be any quicker or slower than it was, Eric's pants had fallen, Jane's dress had lifted and her legs had spread, panties thrown to the wayside. The two writhed together, tensioning themselves against each other by hands or by legs as the thrusted into and away from the other, Jane's arms wrapped around Eric's back and hands holding onto him by the fingertips, her moans further deafening Eric's mind.
>Eric broke Jane's grasp, holding her hands to the bed as he thrusted into her, and she writhed with pleasure beneath him.
>Eric nibbled at her neck
>As time and thrusting wore on, Eric's thrusts became more rapid and more forceful, Jane's moans grew from a murmer to a yell while her legs twisted and wrapped around Eric's waist.
>The thrusts slowed, and increased in force, both bodies turning to fuzz and tension, as the bodies slowed and grew tense, so too eventually did Jane's hold of Eric's waist grow tighter as she held him in her legs
>Jane's squeals turned to vocal gasps, as Eric had finally edged her and put his arms under her shoulders, granting him that much more control over her bouncing, and force to thrust himself into her body.
>Jane twitched as the final thrusts reduced all sensation below the waist to a tight contraction and then a highly sensitized release, agitated by twitches from both herself, and the few thrusts added for measure.
>Eric looked outside the eyes which had turned to a sharp focus on his own, seeing her face as a second portal to read her body.
>Even under her dress he could feel her body twitching, each one sending millions of signals and more sensations. He could hear whimpers under sharp sputtering breaths which he could hear and feel on his ear as he gave her a few kisses on the lips and on the jaw and neck.
>In all likelihood, not only would she have to change her dress, Eric would have to change the sheets.
>Eric knew from just a fraction of what he could see and feel, that she had came, and slowly extracted himself from her.
>Eric rolled to the side and brought the woman to a snuggle, an opportunity she siezed quickly and clutched onto him waiting for the shaking to subside, and her heartrate, to decrease.
>Eric found, with a wet spot on the bed where Jane's waist had been, that his earlier suspicions had been correct. However, changing the sheets could wait until he had settled Jane down, and collected his mind.
Meanwhile. Loco Hills, New Mexico.
>Michael and Jason walked down a street that might as well have been empty in a town that could only be described with the word "community."
"Community. Fucking A, right." Michael stated.
>"This is where the records say? Not Roswell? Not Hope?"
"Yup. This is where the records say she came from. Loco Hills New Mexico. Damn place is tiny. Only smaller town I can think of is Sattley California. Though it's hard to think Sattley could've been a stable community, what with it having less than half the hundred and ten people in Hope."
>"Mike, think we could stick out any more?"
"Than a town of a hundred thirty? Yeah, if we went to Roswell and wore regular clothes without tinfoil we'd be the OTHER guy in town, rather than the two strangers in the middle of fuck all for dozens of miles."
>"It's got a charm to it. Maybe Marina and I could live here." Jason said as he found they'd reached the general store.
>The two walked in, greeted by silence strong enough to be notable. As though the world outside the space between them, and an old bespectacled shopkeeper simply did not exist.
>"Welcome, strangers. What can I get you?" The old man, doing an excellent Wilford Brimley asked.
"We'd like some water and some information."
>"Now, I can't guarantee no wreckoning of information, but I'll try and help you out. What brings you all the way out here?" the old man asked, turning to retrieve some bottles of water from a stock.
"I'm here about a Wilson family in town, old couple, grown daughter left town, you know of them?"
>"Know of them? Why Patrick Wilson's my drinkin' buddy. What business you have with the Wilsons?"
>Jason struck in. "Sir, we're private eyes..." Jason lied, doubling down woth "... You may see our badges if you like."
>"And what do a couple detectives like yourselves want with the Wilsons?"
"We were hired on by associates of the young lady Grace Wilson to investigate her disappearance. As we've been finding, there are few if any reliable character witnesses who could give us an idea where such a girl could wonder off to. Of course, I'd like you to note I said ASSOCIATES, not FRIENDS." Jason emphasized.
>"And why so you think these people weren't her friends?" the old man asked.
"They stated as much. They don't know much about her, she doesn't really discuss personal matters with them, preferences, hobbies, no one seems to really know her."
>The old man furrowed his brow and thought for a minute.
>"Hows about I close up shop and escort you to mister and missus Wilson's place?"
"Thanks, that'd be very kind of you, sir. My associate and I will just follow you, please lead the way."
>The old man hobbled over to a sign on the dusty window and turned the sign to announce the closure of the store before he began the hobble to the Wilson residence.

>"So how does a little town like this manage to exist? Doesn't seem like there's anything to put this place out here." Jason inquired.
>"Well, we're a small community, mostly we work in Roswell or Atoka. I'm sure you know that we're in the mountain time zone, and as such are an Hour ahead of California."
"Jason, should I tell him?"
>"Go for it."
"USED TO BE... an hour ahead of California." Michael remarked.
>"Beg your pardon, stranger?" The old shopkeeper asked.
>"What Mike here's getting at is that there's no California anymore." Jason stated.
>The shopkeeper furrowed his brow before repeating the previous sentence. "Beg your pardon, stranger?"
"Well, I can provide eyewitness testimony. Basically the land of the fruits and nuts became the land of the queers and degenerates, who embraced deviant behaviors as a form of social signalling and then proceeded to double down every time someone did something more deviant until they eventually deteriorated into disparate factions and one of them got a hold of some missiles and some people who knew how to use them before destroying much of the state in blasts and rendering it unsafe to inhabit with fallout."
>"What about Oregon and Washington?"
"People live there but I'll let you in on a little secret... It's free real estate."
>"Really?"
"May as well be. Property value on the coast, like US naval power projection in the pacific has been a thing of the past for nine years. I was crossing over the mountains with my girlfriend at the time when the clouds behind us lit up and... well next time I was there I was making damn good bank to be there."
>"I didn't know anything like that happened. You'll forgive my ignorance, we don't get many visitors out here."
"I can imagine. I don't get many visitors where I live either, granted it's kind of a story, but you get the point."
>As the three men continued down the street, Jason couldn't help turning his head and raising an ear to the breeze to catch just the hint of some words carrying over the breeze.
>An accented voice? Anglophone?
>"...Hey now! Hey now! Don't dreeeam iiiit's over, hey now! heyyy now! When the woooorld comes innnn they come, they come..."
"I hear it too, it's just music, Jason." Michael chided as he looked back to see the man who looked almost exactly alike to him, albeit a more spindly version, raising his head to its side as though he were a dog sensing an intruder on master's land.
>"...Yeah, but I want to know what song." Jason replied.
"Don't dream it's over."
>"Who's it by?"
"Crowded house. Now... back to the task at hand."
>"Ol' Bill Graham's playin' his vinyls again. Can't blame him. Some people just can't stand the quiet. Just wish you couldn't hear it across town."
"To be fair, that statement's probably a lot more impressive literally anywhere else. 
>"I wonder what the girls are up to. Mike? Your thought's?"
"Probably playing with the youngins or watching a movie. It's about the time of month for Kathy to start on the conspiracy movies so... Executive Action?"
>"A personal favorite of mine."
"What about you, old timer?"
>"I guess the old lady's knitting. Maybe she's listening to the radio, but i doubt we'd get a signal until tonight. Not much makes it out here 'cept the stations in Roswell. Here we are. I'll leave you gentlemen to it. Be sure to stop by before you leave." The old man stated.
>As the old shopkeeper departed, Mike knocked on the door and waited.
>the door opened. A couple, a skinny old man in a yellow polo and slacks, and a short woman aged out of shape.
>"Howdy! What brings you two out here?"
"Sir, we've been hired to investigate the disappearance of a young woman we believe to be your daughter, a Grace Wilson. Is that correct?"
>"Yes?"
"May we come in?"

Chapter 6: Fading Away.
January 24 2026. 1522 hours
>Mcmullin and Weaver were gathered together with Ernest Stockwell, the CEO of Vulture Hawk security solutions, and specialists Ken Morris, and Bruce Vasquez.
>Discussion, though sporadic, was relatively reverent of all parties present, particularly the specialists of the so aptly named assassination division and the hapless CEO.
>That was... until he spoke.
>"GENTLEMEN! I too have been an observer of the activities of the border penetration division, and I believe you have used your funds to further an objective. The question is, what objective is this, that we have such employee turnover? If I am to believe the reports placed before me this morning which have driven me to attend this matter personally, I am led to the belief that no less than TWO agents have been lost to this firm in the last third, and what's more, stolen encryption devices and personally assaulted both of the representatives of the border penetration division present. I want to know WHAT keeps driving these instances! I believe it's been a scant two years since we lost a pilot who helped rebuild aviation. So I have to ask, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?"
>From somewhere, unbeknownst to those previously engaged in the discussion, a figure had become present in the corner of the room.
>"Maybe if your employees weren't subject to "setups" imprisonment, torture, rape at the hands of your weird brainwashing technician, WHO HERSELF has gone missing, and all at the hands of the company itself rather than the people they very well expected were the usual suspects, they wouldn't have such a high rate of attrition. However, as long as these remain the realities of the company as the agency in Langley requires, these situations in which you lose people who know too much will persist. It's only a matter of time, really before someone decides that leaking such information is a good idea. Even shorter until someone knows just how many incidents this company has created." The figure chided.
>The men sitting at the table, having shot their gazes to the man, leaning on a counter and apparently finishing up some business on his cellphone before the screen faded and he pocketed it, standing forward and picking up a file.
>"And just WHO in the blue fuck are you?" Stockwell demanded.
>"And amused onlooker..." The man trailed off before gliding the file onto the table and turning toward the exit. "... best get to repairing that bucket, no?" He said as he began walking out.
>Stockwell paused, as did the four men with whom he was meeting.
>It must've been seven seconds before he slowly reached for the file.
>It had everthing
>Eric Rall, Alias: John Stanton. former affiliation to Vandal Clan, known associates throughout america, only one or two of which were FORMER vandals, many others were federal disposal agents who took favor or pity on angry men with extremism issues and motivation. His known characteristics included high acumen for technical skills and fabrication, tracking, evasion and other skills that were involved in making oneself scarce.
>Michael Berdan, Left the company and never went back after... HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE KNOWN ABOUT THAT?
>Jason Rogers, Vulture Hawk produced CIA asset produced for project hyena. Known associates all over the country, but mostly Florida. Those outside weren't dealers and traffickers, though some were overlapped by a significant degree by associates matching Berdan and Rall.
>Grace Wilson, nickname "Gray." Known associates, some of whom were drug dealers, contractors and mercs. Known to frequent a bar called the Kansas Rebel, Amphetamine dependency, apparently into that good shit, as well as some freaky shit given some of her other frequent stops, which were all accompanied by notes which suggested that anyone who might frequent such locations had proclivities of a... sexual nature.
>Home addresses, coordinates, nearby towns of interest, people who may be prone to assisting them in hard times, people prone to harboring them.
>Whoever was watching these people had eyes everywhere but the toilet.
>Then again, the kind of voyeur given to lurking the likes of which must've been require to get THIS information about such insulated people was usually the kind of person most prone to having some toilet cams of their own.
>Maybe Stockwell would wash his hands before handling anything after that file. But for the time, he had some hits to call.
>"Gentlemen, you are dismissed."

Rall's house. 1600 hours.
>"And so we do what now?"
"Well, we've got the new names forged, we've got copies of our new paperwork. I guess the last thing to do is to arrange our property and assets into our new names and to the untrained whoever might want to say otherwise, it'll look like I died at sea and you still haven't come by whatever unknown force to this point in time."
>"Just as planned. So then you... get a loan? It seems someone had something to say about lenders somewhat recently."
"And he was right, but things didn't shake out in a good way. Take it like this, you're probability of living to forty increased by several orders when-"
>the phone, the only link from the house to the outside world, began ringing.
"Hang on a minute, honey. Anyone who has THAT number is enormously important. Could be a crisis" Eric said as he walked to it and pulled the handset off the receiver.
"Hello?"
"MIKE?"
"CAlM DOWN. EXPLAIN."
"Yeah, it's a good thing you caught me when you did then..."
"you what?"
"HA! You got doxxed! Did they find out about the time you went to AmRen?"
"Yeah, yeah, you know what to do... Yeah, I'll help. Sure, I'll make you and your family disappear. They know nothing, they GOT nothing. Don't worry, I got it covered... no one's getting to you OR your family while I'm handling you."
"Yeah, out five minutes ago."
>Eric firmly slammed the set into its receiver and snapped his gaze onto Jane.
"Hon', pack the last of the stuff, and I'll load it into the truck. The timetable's moved forward by twelve hours."
>"What?"
"No protest, do it. I don't get to sleep tonight because of it."

>Jane went on about packing the last of the clothes while Eric made his last phone call before he'd be abandoning the place.
>The very next thing he did was pick out the number to the center and then the extension to Gray.
>The third ring brought an answer.
>"Hello?"
"I get the feeling a loooot of people have been compromised, you're on the list."
>"Old man, what are you on about?"
"Ha. My knee's acting up. There's a lightning storm coming. Make yourself short."
>Click.
>Eric dialed again.
>A female voice answered the phone.
>At THIS number?
"Ma'am. can you get me Anon?"
>Moments passed and the woman could be heard calling Anon to the phone, explaining that she didn't know who it was, but he had his name.
>"Hello?"
"Anon, confidence is high, make yourself scarce."
>"Eric?"
"Yeah. I get the feeling there's a list and we're all on it."
>"Where the hell am I supposed to go? WHERE can I even go?"
"You could go back if you think it'd work."
>A long and irritated sigh was heard before Anon affirmed.
>"Fine, fine."
>Eric clicked the set into the receiver and stood.
>It was time. 
"You done?"
>"Yeah. So when do we leave?"
"Couple minutes." Eric answered as he began putting fewer feet between himself and the couple of guns he was going to keep with him in transit.
>Eric grabbed his MK23 and an MP7A1 he'd trafficked in his earliest days before he hired on with vulturehawk.

>2334 hours Somewhere in central Montana. 
>Jane was long since asleep and Eric was nearly at his new residence. Another hour of this and he'd be home free, another four and he'd be at about the time he was supposed to be getting up, but he'd be helping a friend disappear among a large, militant nationalist group of friends who numbered in the double digit thousands and all had a penchant for houseboats, edgy jokes, and the occasional activity that was maybe... slightly... potentially...kinda... a little... outright seditious.
>But for now, he needed to stop at this gas station and fill the tank.
>Eric stopped up at the pump, went in, payed the clerk with cash and began pumping the gas.
>Then a shiver came.
>"Well holy shit." a voice remarked. "It really IS you."
>"Turn around." The voice commanded. Whoever it was, they had him dead to rights.
>Eric turned and found... nothing.
"Okay, whoever you are, you're pretty damn good. Are you at the side of the building?"
>"YOU'RE awfully flippant for a man who's about to be dead."
"Many times I've wandered when the day would come. But you sound familiar."
>"Tell you what, Rall. You're not living through the night, I'll give you a chance though. let's put that memory of yours to the test. WHO AM I?"
>The owner of the voice finally revealed himself, slipping into view from the side of the gas station's poorly lit building.
>There were no lights save for the dim one at the front door of the station, so he couldn't see well other than a murky figure. He was holding a glock 19 with what he expected was a DBAL PL and an AAC suppressor by what he could make out of the gun. He recognized the night vision rig for its parts in a second and a half, a flimsy old AVS-9 with Jade green filters over its lenses, a wilcox dual power mount and a crye nightcap with a cable running to the back of his head. Under the nightcap, he could make no features out, as they were hidden under a balaclava.
>The figure slowly lurked toward him and in a fluid motion, swung the goggles up revealing two dots Eric couldn't quite make out.
>Slowly, the figure came forward. Slowly.
>The figure passed through a small pocket lit by splash from the light at the door before beginning to demand an answer.
>"Well? Care to take a chance?"
>The two dark spots changed. If only for a moment he saw it. Two jade green eyes that'd been slightly muted and perched in the shaded sockets of a man with a less than healthy sleep schedule.
"Charlie Gibson? Is that you?"
>"Well, Well. It seems after all these years you still remember ole' Charlie."
"Damn, what's it been? Twelve years?"
>"About that long. What ever happened to you?"
"Went off, joined the vandal clan, read that book you told me about and gotta say, you lost me at 'smoke meth and shoot the mailman.'"
>"Damn man. You know Vulture Hawk has a contract out on you, right?" Gibson demanded.
"I kinda thought that's why you were here."
>"I was gonna, but then I found out it's really you. I gotta know, man, why the fuck are they after you?"
"Dude, Vulture Hawk is bad business, if you're working for them, go freelance. The exponentially higher pay isn't worth it when they set you up to die in an international incident."
>"WHAT did you do for Vulture Hawk?"
"Border penetration. Speaking of, how did YOU get roped into this shit?"
>"Got mad one day, started taking it out on some redwoods, and then I felt better and thought I should take out my anger on redwoods for a living. They ARE the shittiest trees, after all. Well, becoming an explosives expert and a few dozen counts of self defense with an automatic rifle later I get pulled out of the lockup and offered a job."
"See, bad business."
>Gibson lowered his pistol. "Hey, you got a plan for this?"
"Plan for what?"
>"Disappearing."
"I was in the process, but you found me, so I can't be sure no one else will now."
>"I wouldn't worry about it."
"Why not?"
>"Because I maaaay have guessed the password to the NSA surveillance archive and done some detective work to find your plates off the surveillance grids and guess where you'd stop for fuel... all on a machine within the Vulture Hawk complex. Mind you I didn't 'guess' guess. More like 'bruteforce' guess."
>Eric looked at the man like he'd just been told the fantastical story he'd ever heard.
>"What?"
"I'm sorry, but that's bullshit, there's no way, also a hundred percent chance it WOULD be loose enough to breach with fucking bruteforce."
>"Piggybacking the mainframe helped, but yeah. Some heads are gonna roll for that and I... don't intend on being one of them."
"Seriously, bruteforce?"
>"Yeah. The pump has already popped, just... get in your truck and get the fuck on. I don't want to have to kill you."
"Yeah... I'll be going now." Eric said as he began pulling the pump out of the truck and mounting up.
>"One last thing! It best be like you DID die, Eric. Oh, and uh... They didn't send me out after 'John Stanton.' They got your real name. Maybe change it." Gibson Explained briefly. With that, he turned around and walked back behind the building.
"Fucking hell. Niggers are just popping out of the woodwork tonight." Eric said as he started the truck and momentarily lost traction as he accelerated off into the night. "...At least I'm getting lucky."

>For another hour, Eric felt in himself, a great sense of awe at the fact that somehow, his rather aggressive and abrupt control inputs into the truck had never been quite enough to appear to wake Jane from her sleep.
>He eventually arrived at his new home. It was a small town, the neighborhood was scattered out among large plots of land at least a couple of acres wide.
>And there he was. He dismounted in the driveway and found himself on a plot of land that was at least a good five acres or so wide. An empty looking house with some furniture thrown in awaited him.
>He walked around the truck and opened the door, tried to wake Jane, and found that she was simply not waking.
"Like a brick." He thought to himself before he gave up, picked her up out of the truck, and carried her into the house, depositing her onto the bed and tucking her in, then walking back out, and locking the doors of the house.
>Eric wondered just how she'd react to waking up alone in the strange surroundings of a neighborhood that for the most part, was in full view of the american wilderness and flanked on all sides by hills and forestry.
>Maybe if she slept late he'd even get to see it.
>No... he wouldn't get to see it. Damn shame, it might be cute. Like when he got that puppy and it woke up alone in the middle of the night.
>Some part of him envied Jane. Sure, she didn't have a task to invest herself in, but at the same time, he wasn't exactly comfortable in his present situation or close to the end of his relatively long day.
>HE had four more hours to go before he was working on getting Mike, thankfully ignorant of just what his plan was, to bring his family to disappear among the vandals.
>All this, the drive there and home, trying to reason out to him that it was the best way to hide him, and all of this while he hadn't slept since six in the morning and was setting about at the time that he'd originally intended to be waking up. So running about twenty two hours, he'd find himself reasoning with a man likely better rested and possibly under some illusion that he knew better.
>He'd deal with it when it came, but for the time being... He had a lot of driving to do.

0507 hours...
>Eric finally arrived at the location. A beat up little piece of dirt that passed as an airfield while he waited on a stolen Cessna Skyhawk to set down on the airfield and let out a pissed off dude with gray eyes, a couple young'ins and the green eyed woman.
>For the time being, however, the Cessna skyhawk's abysmal top speed probably meant that he'd have a couple hours to nap.
>Eric dipped his head back and closed his eyes, carried off to a day in the past.
>For a time he'd found himself somewhere long forgotten.
>For some reason or another, he was sitting somewhere listening to a man who looked like something of an administrator speak about... soemthing, when across the door, he could hear a student hovering... Was he singing a Nasheed?
>A Student crossed the door with his shirt pulled over his head in a "cornholio" pose.
>"Abu yaseer salil sawalim, nasheed abu ya!"
>Oh... it's the one from when they beheaded James Foley.
>"Ahehe, our students are well educated by our multiculture program which makes them more worldly and more rounded." The administrator lied in a tone that told Eric immediately that he was covering a truckload of bullshit with a napkin.
"You can't fool me. You're full of it."
>The administrator visibly squirmed as he tried to make something up. He opened his mouth to start spewing... words, but none came out. only the sounds of fingers tapping on glass...
>Eric jolted back to reality and looked out his window to see Mike and company waiting outside the drive side window. Eric just turned the electronics on and lowered the windows.
"How long have YOU been here?" He asked, looking at his watch to see that it was nine in the morning.
>"Just got here. So I take it you're going to make us 'dissapear?'"
"That's right. You might not like it though... at first."

Sometime later.
>"So let me get this shit straight... you expect that I can just go into the vandal compound and live there, not VISIT, like I did a while back, but LIVE there. Among Vandals."
"You visited the vandal compound? In that case, I'm sure you'll have some friends who'll make happy neighbors."
>"Okay... So It's that or..."
"Cave in the woods and a shitty rifle with a couple boxes of ammo."
>"Alright, I'll try."
"Cool. Now let me make a phonecall."
>Eric pulled out his phone and dialed in a number from muscle memory, hoping that it'd get an answer.
>The third ring was interrupted by the familiar voice of one of the Vandals.
>"Hello?"
"Hey. I can't name any names right now but I need some help with a sensitive issue. I can't discuss any details at the moment but I need help. You recognize my voice, right?"
>"I don't recognize your voice but you sound familiar. What's my name?"
"Stone."
>"Alright. I'll take to some people. When can I expect details?"
"When the time is right. Stand by, I'll make contact when I can."
>"Alright." Stone answered before he hung up the phone.
"Okay then. Mike, your new last name is Vandal. Also you're gonna be under surveillance, so go ahead and don't do any subversive shit that would be par for the course to a rootless cosmopolitan."
>"A what?"
"International clique."
>"The what?" Mike continued.
"We're doing a bit here, aren't we?" Eric thought incredulously before his thoughts were interrupted by Ekatarina's voice.
>"Don't act like a jew!"
>Eric grinned and looked to the back seat where Ekatarina sat with a stone face.
>Mike and Eric started laughing, Eric, barely able to control the truck as he continued to laugh.
"Aw man..." Eric started, wiping tears from his face "... Kids are asleep, right?"
>"Yes. They sleep like..." Ekatarina answered before she trailed off. "..Bricks?"
"Sounds good. We should be at the Vandal compound in a few hours. I don't know about YOU, but I can't wait to see some of my old friends."
>"I heard some stories. Did you by any chance have something to do with those Jets that went down in Canada?"
"Worth it."
>"Those Canadian troops who died 'searching for the pilots' weren't accidents, were they?"
"Noooope. Combat casualties."
>"pfft. Terrorists."
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. And our friends to the north needed some freein'."

1532 hours.
>Eric pulled up to the gate of the compound and one of the guards walked up to the open driverside window.
>"Afternoon, stranger, what's your business- Oh. God damn! Eric Rall in the flesh. I recognize these two! The wife and I drank with them about a month ago! What's going on, man?"
"Well, Roger... I need to talk to Stone about just that, would you mind letting us in and leading the way?"
>"Sure, sure. Park just inside the gate and I'll find him for you."
>Roger opened the gate and after a few minutes, Eric found himself Catching up with his old friend Stone while a family of... guns... he guessed, followed the two of them around.
>"So, it's that bad, huh?"
"Yeah. My friend here basically got doxxed by a PMC, and it's not safe for him to be living on his own."
>"Well, I hope you understand what a request this is, it's not a RIGHT to be admitted into residence here."
"Believe me, I understand, but I can't let my buddy and his family alone to the whims of vulture hawk. Knowing them, they'd probably turn them into the cause for world war four."
>"I'll make the necessary arrangements, I'll set an interview process in motion and, with your word of course, I'm certain that they could be very well integrated into our society."
"Well if my endorsement is necessary, I'd be more than happy to furnish it."
>"There are some matters to speak of regarding yourself, Eric."
"Matters of what sort?"
>"Would you be willing to move back into the compound? If so, would you be willing to take another wife? There are still plenty of people who'd be enthralled to add YOU to their-"
"No. I'm already in the territory and I haven't settled in yet. Not to say that I intend to be a stranger, mind you."
>"I dig it. So about the second."
"No, I've already got one."
>"Well, we'll be happy to take care of your friends for you, why don't you stay a while, we can catch up and go out drinking."
"Not today, stone. I've got a lady waiting on me, probably starting to get lonely, some equipment that still needs moving, and some arrangements to make before I come back with something even better than new members."
>"Oh lord, what've you got planned, you maniac?"
"Lets just say that before the end of the year good things will happen. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got someone waiting at home."
>"Alright. Well, be sure to stop in. It's not often someone leaves and we get to see them again. Now, as for you, Mister Berdan, please come with me, and bring your family."
>After a quick exit, Eric drove another hour and a half before arriving home, seeing that the house, in the waning light of half past five, appeared much more alive than he had left it. From inside came the sounds of big band era music, which Jane fancied almost as much as he did.
>Eric approached the front door, opened it and walked inside to find a note on a stool that read "In the kitchen."
>In the kitchen he found a note that read "go left."
>And so Eric followed a hallway leading to his left, which led to an open sitting room.
>Suddenly he heard feet dashing across the floor and the sounds of fabric furling as he looked to the right, seeing Jane spin toward him in a green dress that flourished as she spun before she slowed and gracefully but quickly placed her right arm behind his neck and her left on his shoulder and pulled him down to her for a kiss.
>After several seconds she pulled away, only to remark. "I was waiting all day to do that."

>After another six hours, what stamina Eric could muster to keep up with Jane had been... depleted.
>He shuffled into the shower, nearly fell asleep standing at a posture resembling attention, and then dried himself off, unable to bother with anything else besides getting himself dry before throwing himself onto the bed and falling into an abyss of nothing.
>The calm cool abyss. Somehow he couldn't stay there forever. Whether it was the abyss that receded or some internal tempestuous nature that would pull him away, he couldn't rest on his laurels in there for long.
>Somehow, in his mind, he was aware even as he sat there, that he would be withdrawn from it. Somehow the thought of a tempest sweeping him from darkness brought to his mind, the image of a triskelion. What he only became aware of after minutes however, was the sound of a laugh echoing through the void.
>Something about it seemed... familiar.
>Was... HE cackling?
>Suddenly it all went silent, and the world looked a little darker before he began to feel warm.
>The movement of his limbs seemed... encumbered. Like they couldn't move, though the arms moved freely, somehow they felt as though one was outstretched and the other wrapped around something.
>Soon enough he'd find that he was in bed.
>He was wrapped in sheets that'd been pulled tight over his shoulders, other than his head, the only thing that stuck out was Jane's head, which stuck out of a rounded cocoon of blankets that she'd pulled tight around them.
>Eric lowered his shoulders and slowly fed his arms out of the blankets fingertips to elbow and then pulled his body out from the top down.
>Soon enough he'd dressed himself and got the morning routine out of the way, and decided that it was time to intimately familiarize himself with the layout of the new house.
>He'd start with the attic.
>As he started to explore the attic, he found a stash of forgotten publications that appeared to be deteriorated away, most likely, in his opinion, comic books made from pulp or some other material that was like to deteriorate.
>Then onto a stash of jars full of a clear liquid, which had been covered in such a heavy layer of dust as to appear to be topsoil. For now, Eric would settle for the assumption that they were hundred eighty proof alcohol flavored alcohol from some point in the past. For the time being, he would leave the jars of good ol' mountain dew to stew for a few more years, and continued to search through the attic.
>At once he found something he didn't anticipate, but had he, it would have been the ONE THING he didn't want to see in his life.
>Not hazardous explosive chemicals, not dynamite that was sweating profusely, or black mold, or six dead bodies decomposing. A book. Bound in rather some rather obvious skin that'd been scarred as though it was cut scratched and burned, maybe tortured.
"For FUCK sake. There's literally nothing I could NOT want more." Eric stated loudly.
>There he sat, looking at the most powerful force he could ever see.
>The sealed book.
"Hmmm... all the secrets of mankind through the ages backward and forward. Should I let Jane know?" Eric asked himself.
>The book opened, and one by one, the pages turned as though by themselves before coming to rest on a single page reading. "Yes."
"Should I abuse the power of the book for ideological gain?"
>More pages swung
>"YES."
"Well fuck. How does humanity die out?"
>The book flipped forward to its last pages, detailing the invasion of the Proxima system by a race of blue aliens the humans called the Kilklih, who came in waves and waves of gel like beings whose form imitated sexually servile human women with the exception of various physical features generously exaggerated or gracefully streamlined depending on the preferences of those they seduced, who themselves, were the shortest for the world, having weak or inverted in-group preference to even a group as all encompassing as their own species.
>Of how the empire of man ate it up, and created a bastard race of infiltrators who slowly turned over every stronghold of humanity into blue gel creatures, like some cartoonish character out of some Japanese perversion writ to reality.
>The last human was born april twentieth of thirty fifty five on Kepler 22, and his last speeches were condemnation for the mixing of the species and the aversion to violence that led to it, stating that "The warfather was right" and that "The warfather did nothing wrong." Noting that "The warfather and his intensely self preferential tribe of nanite freaks still persist. We should have known that if two species can mix, one's a genetic parasite. THEY KNEW! BUT HOW?"
"Who's 'The Warfather?"
>The book flipped back. Until it came to what seemed like an encyclopedic entry on a man named John Herman, born in the twenty-second century, "died" by merge with suit after an event occurring in 2173, distinctive features during life being green eyes and brown hair, which were super-dominant traits passed from his great great great great grandmother, who was an FAL. Awakened from Dormant state in twenty-two eighty-six and ruled the planet he'd woke up on after a bloody conquest for fifteen hundred and seventy years.
>Eric had seen and read enough from the sealed book to know that he had no more interest in merely playing with the book like a toy. He tried to think up some curiosity that would have meaning to him. Something that he could really care about. He couldn't care less about some contentious historical event or some high in the sky ideal and the folly of it. He wanted to find something that he would feel personally.
"I would know what tragedy awaits me next." Eric muttered. As the book began to turn through pages, he heard A feminine voice call out for him.
>"Eriiiic! Come here, or I'll be cold!" Jane called out.
>The way she called out for him delighted Eric to his core. He weighed his priorities, and decided wisely that the future, was later.
>Eric went to Jane, and never returned to the book.
>Eric Lived to the ripe old age of eighty-eight, dying in his sleep in twenty seventy six. Jane lived to be eighty-seven, dying in twenty eighty-three. The two had five children, the second son among them, elected to the office of president in twenty sixty-four, becoming the youngest president to serve.
>Two Jane and Eric's sons married the daughters of Michael and Ekatarina Berdan, who, after living a year among them, joined the vandal clan. The rest married within the vandals.
>The vandal clan officially established the vandal party in twenty thirty eight, after the republican and democratic parties fell from viability due to lack of credibility. It was this party that would one day be headed by Eric Rall Jr.
>In the intervening years from twenty twenty-six to twenty seventy-six, Eric Rall started Dynamic armament solutions, a firm which manufactured many successful lines of precision rifles, invented twenty highly precise proprietary calibers, four of which were sold exclusively to members of the vandal clan.
>ten by sixty-eight millimeter vandal became a popular cartridge among long range shooters.

Fin.